SAN DIEGO — General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS)’s Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) performance testing has been successfully completed for the C-2A Greyhound, E-2C+ Hawkeye and E-2D Advanced Hawkeye aircraft, the company announced in an Oct. 2 release.

The testing supports the Navy’s development of a propeller Aircraft Recovery Bulletin (ARB), which is a prerequisite for arresting propeller aircraft aboard USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78). The Navy completed the performance testing of the GA-EMS system on the Runway Arrested Landing Site (RALS) at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey.

“The AAG system is designed to arrest a broader range of aircraft and provide higher reliability and safety margins for the U.S. Navy’s Ford-class of aircraft carriers,” said Rolf Ziesing, vice president of programs at GA-EMS. “As each aircraft is brought in for testing, AAG continues to perform reliably, arrestment after arrestment. The successful turboprop arrestments at RALS mark another significant milestone that moves the Navy closer to initiating recovery testing for these aircraft aboard CVN 78.”

The AAG system has been exercised extensively, with more than 800 total roll-in and fly-in aircraft arrestments successfully performed at RALS. In addition, nearly double the approximately 400 planned at-sea F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet recoveries during sea trials and shakedown have been completed aboard CVN 78. GA-EMS continues to collaborate closely with the Naval Air Systems Command and the shipbuilder to optimize the AAG system and the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), and support upgrades during the CVN 78 Post Shakedown Availability (PSA).

“We continue to stress the system, analyze results, and tune the system to ensure maximum performance,” said Dean Key, senior director of EMALS/AAG programs at GA-EMS. “We are on target to be ready for fleet operations when CVN 78 completes its PSA in 2019. We are pleased with AAG’s performance and remain focused on optimizing the system’s capabilities to meet the daily operations and mission requirements for CVN 78 and the next two Ford-class carriers currently under construction.”

AAG is a turbo-electric system designed for controlled deceleration of aircraft. AAG is installed aboard CVN 78 along with EMALS, which uses electromagnetic technology to launch aircraft from the deck of naval aircraft carriers. Both systems have been successfully tested during at-sea periods aboard CVN 78 and are currently in production for the future John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) and Enterprise (CVN 80) aircraft carriers.

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — Viasat Inc., a global communications company, has made new security capabilities available for U.S. and international Five Eyes (FVEY) naval forces, the company said in an Oct. 2 release.

Viasat introduced its integrated Mobile Dynamic Defense (MDD) cybersecurity software for use at sea to securely capture and distribute sensitive data to onshore counterparts and defend against rapidly evolving cyber threats during a maritime mission.

MDD is highly valuable for maritime platforms because of its ability to provide the necessary policy enforcement and in-mission configuration flexibility without a connection to a remote management system by using the information assurance “Defense in Depth” model, which weaves together multiple layers of security controls and countermeasures. This model enables the Viasat MDD platform to ensure sensitive information hosted on the end user device (EUD) is continually checked and protected from compromise — even if the EUD is disconnected from the military operations center.

“Hackers are increasingly looking to compromise mobile devices as a way to gain access to classified government and military data,” said Ken Peterman, president, Government Systems, Viasat. “By providing Viasat’s MDD software, naval personnel now have the ability to provision and configure devices as a mission changes — which can help secure highly-sensitive mission information and defend against emerging cyber threats — even at sea.”

MDD software is an integral component of Viasat’s comprehensive cybersecurity platform, which analyzes terabits of data across commercial and government networks on a daily basis to defend against some of the world’s most sophisticated cyber threats. Viasat currently offers secure, high-speed and resilient satellite communications-enabled services via its Hybrid Adaptive Network concept for a range of U.S. and FVEY military operations.

Viasat’s MDD security capabilities are now authorized for purchase by naval and maritime customers in the Five Eyes countries: United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy has established a new unit to sustain a special mission capability in its maritime patrol community with the coming retirement of the P-3 Orion aircraft.

A Sept. 10 internal directive from the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations directed the establishment on that date of Fleet Support Unit One at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida, one of two sites that serve as home bases for the Navy’s P-8A Poseidon maritime patrols aircraft.

According to the directive, Fleet Support Unit One “will configure and operate P-8 aircraft to provide a follow-on special mission capability in place of [special] projects patrol squadron (VPU) P-3 aircraft due to sundown in 2019.”

The mission of the unit will be to provide “oversight, training, operations, maintenance, and configuration management for the P-8 quick reaction capability aircraft,” according to the directive.

Fleet Support Unit One will have an officer in charge rather than a commanding officer, who will report to commander, Patrol Reconnaissance Wing 11, at Jacksonville.

The Navy’s sole VPU squadron, VPU-2, operates several specially configured P-3C Orion aircraft from Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. The squadron is scheduled for deactivation in fiscal 2019 in concert with the phase-out of the P-3C from operational active-duty patrol squadrons.

WASHINGTON — The Navy’s nuclear propulsion industrial base is meeting the needs of the Navy, but it requires a lot of attention to sustain it to ensure its availability.

“The [nuclear industrial] base is small,” Adm. James F. Caldwell, director, Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program, said Oct. 2 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “The base is healthy and capable of supporting our Navy nuclear propulsion needs. It’s sustainable through the program of record but it takes a lot of energy to sustain that.”

Caldwell noted that the nuclear vendors, particularly the principal vendors, share the culture of the Navy nuclear propulsion program.

“What matters the most to the Navy nuclear propulsion program is a stable 30-year shipbuilding plan and a stable budget,” he said. “These are the things that stimulate our commercial vendors to support us. If they know that they’re going to have the business, they will invest their facilities and stay the course with us.”

Caldwell noted that “in the 1990s, when the force structure went down, it resulted in our major suppliers operating significantly below capacity. We were worried that the demise of the nuclear industrial base would result in the loss of the last critical skills that we needed. Since then we focused on right-sizing the industrial base to sustain the critical skills and facilities that we need, and the optimal words were low-rate production, consolidation and down-sizing as appropriate to sustain the skills that we need.”

He also said that “since the 1970s, the Navy nuclear propulsion program has been the sole source that has been driving [the delivery of] new reactors. We’ve done so through first-tier suppliers who don’t specifically rely on commercial business for their business. We have commissioned some 99 vessels since 1979.

“Today, our industrial base is made up of hundreds of vendors of various sizes, but we’re focused mostly on about 28 principal vendors,” he said. “Many of these have been with us for 40 or 50 years and some going on even 60 years. The portion of Navy work for these vendors ranges from 15 percent to 95 percent, some even a little more; the average is around 60 percent. Many of them are seeking opportunities to grow their business in the commercial sector.”

Caldwell regards the nuclear industrial base in three levels: reactor plant heavy components; flow components such as valves and pumps; and reactor instrumentation.

He said the Navy is down to one vendor for reactor plant heavy components, for which the Navy’s requirements are very stringent.

“In the flow control [components], there’s some degree of competition, but the barriers for entry are high,” he said. “It does take many years to develop vendors to be able to develop the equipment. Probably the most competition is in reactor instrumentation and control. A lot of our vendors have other government business. In this area we have structured our approach to maintain a level of competition while also preserving some redundancy in the vendor base.”

ALHAMBRA, Calif. — EMCORE Corp., a provider of advanced mixed-signal optics products that provide the foundation for today’s high-speed communication network infrastructures and leading-edge defense systems, has been awarded a contract valued at over $4 million to design and manufacture navigational grade Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) for a maritime systems application, the company said in an Oct. 1 release.

This new INS will be based on the EMCORE-Orion series of navigators which incorporate EMCORE’s latest generation fiber-optic gyroscope (FOG) technology. It is designed to be a form, fit and function replacement for legacy LN-100 units used in this application. As part of the contract, EMCORE expects to deliver initial production units that will be used for qualification.

“We are extremely pleased to be selected for this program to develop a navigator for this application,” said David Faulkner, EMCORE’s vice president and general manager of Aerospace & Defense. “EMCORE demonstrated the advantages of its low-risk production FOG technology and recently developed EMCORE-Orion series INS technology, which were key reasons for being selected for this program.”

“This latest contract award results from the innovative fiber optic gyro and inertial sensing technology being developed by our Navigation Systems group,” said Jeffrey Rittichier, EMCORE’s president and CEO. “The investments we are making in this business segment are enabling us to compete and win significant contracts. We look forward to delivering the highest quality product for this program.”

LONDON — The first F-35 Lightning fighter jets have landed on the deck of the United Kingdom’s new aircraft carrier, making history and marking the beginning of more than half-a-century of “Carrier Strike” operations, the U.K. Ministry of Defence in a Sept. 28 release.

Royal Navy Commodore Nathan Gray and Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Andy Edgell were the first pilots to land their F-35s on board the carrier, demonstrating the formidable force HMS Queen Elizabeth and its fleet of jets will be.

The first landings and takeoffs from HMS Queen Elizabeth are the culmination of a national endeavor lasting more than a decade to bring an aircraft carrier back to the U.K.’s arsenal. Able to embark up to 24 of the supersonic jets, the carrier provides the Royal Navy with a capability possessed by few others.

“The largest warship in British history is joining forces with the most advanced fighter jets on the planet. This marks a rebirth of our power to strike decisively from the seas anywhere in the world,” said Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson. “The historic first landing on the deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth is a monumental moment in our country’s proud military history. It is also a statement of Britain’s determination to promote peace and prevent war.”

The landings mark the start of more than 500 takeoffs and touch-downs set to take place from the mammoth warship during the next 11 weeks, with the jets being put through their paces in a range of weather conditions.

The return of “Carrier Strike” to the United Kingdom comes eight years after a fighter jet last landed on a British carrier.

“I am quite emotional to be here in HMS Queen Elizabeth seeing the return of fixed-wing aviation, having been the captain of the aircraft carrier which launched the last Harrier at sea nearly eight years ago,” said the ship’s commanding officer, Capt. Jerry Kyd, who was also the captain of HMS Ark Royal when the last Harrier took off from a carrier. “The regeneration of big-deck carriers able to operate globally, as we are proving here on this deployment, is a major step forward for the United Kingdom’s defense and our ability to match the increasing pace of our adversaries. The first touch-downs of these impressive stealth jets shows how the United Kingdom will continue to be world leaders at sea for generations to come.”

“The Queen Elizabeth-class carriers have been specifically designed and built to operate the F-35 Lightning, offering an immensely flexible and potent combination to deliver military effect around the world,” said Cmdr. Andrew Betton, commander U.K. Carrier Strike Group. “Conducting these trials is a critical and exciting step on this journey and I applaud the many thousands of civilian and military personnel who have played a part in bringing the strategic ambition to reality.”

While the HMS Queen Elizabeth Class carriers will be able to project British military power across the globe for the next half-century, they can also provide humanitarian relief, deepen defense relationships with key allies and provide critical support to our forces as they are deployed across the world.

EDINBURGH, Scotland — The Royal Netherlands Navy (RNLN) has successfully integrated SeeByte’s Neptune into its New Generation Remus 100 fleet, the company announced in a Sept. 28 release.

The vehicles are equipped with SeeByte’s goal-based mission planning and autonomy engine software to expedite and optimize single and multivehicle operations.

“We are privileged to be in a position to continue working with The Royal Netherlands Navy and assist in their goal to achieve security at and from the sea,” said Alastair Cormack, SeeByte’s technical client manager. “With the U.S., U.K. and Canadian navies currently using Neptune software, it is fantastic that the RNLN will now have access to the advanced capabilities we offer.”

Neptune can be used to coordinate fleets of unmanned assets for mine countermeasures missions enabling operators to easily coordinate various assets to search, classify and map, reacquire and identify operations as part of a single mission. By combining all the mission plans and monitoring in a single work station and user interface, teams are able to manage larger fleets of unmanned assets without putting additional strain on the operators.

WASHINGTON — Commander, Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), formally assumed responsibility for ship maintenance availabilities at U.S. Naval Ship Repair Facility and Japan Regional Maintenance Center (SRF-JRMC) from commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet (USPACFLT), Oct. 1, NAVSEA said in a release.

NAVSEA’s responsibilities include the oversight of all ship maintenance and repair operations, industrial processes and procedures, and repair-related programs. USPACFLT will retain administrative control and budget authority for SRF-JRMC.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for the Navy to implement best practices across all ship maintenance facilities,” said NAVSEA Commander, Vice Adm. Tom Moore. “The added synergy will allow us to deliver ships out of maintenance on time and within cost. SRF-JRMC is an outstanding command with a proud and rich history of ensuring the readiness of our forward deployed ships.

“We are thrilled to have them join the One NAVSEA Team. This change will help ensure that the exceptional workforce of SRF-JRMC can benefit from the maintenance expertise NAVSEA brings, putting into practice lessons learned to ensure a streamlined approach to ship maintenance across the fleet.”

Following the 2017 Comprehensive Review and Strategic Readiness Review, the Navy determined that NAVSEA’s technical expertise and proven maintenance processes could be harnessed to ensure the delivery of materially-ready ships to USPACFLT.

“NAVSEA is looking forward to directly supporting USPACFLT and providing a smooth transition to ensure alignment of maintenance industrial operations for SRF-JRMC,” Moore said. “As the Force Behind the Fleet, NAVSEA is dedicated to delivering deployable ships to the fleet on time and on budget.”

In addition to SRF-JRMC, NAVSEA oversees ship maintenance at the Navy’s four public shipyards and seven regional maintenance centers.

WASHINGTON — The Navy expects to have all of its C-130 Hercules transport aircraft back flying this fiscal year after grounding many for problems with their propellers.

“We’ll have all the aircraft up by FY ’19 and all the aircraft to the NP2000 [propeller] by FY ’20,” said Rear Adm. Scott D. Conn, director of Air Warfare in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, testifying Sept. 28 before the House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee.

The Navy Reserve operates 24 C-130T and KC-130T transports, as well as 15 C-40A Skytrain II airlift jets. They are used to support deployed fleet operations by transporting personnel, cargo, spare parts and mail to ships and stations. The C-130 will become even more important in the future.

“The C-130T is the only Navy aircraft capable of moving all modules of the F-35’s engine,” Conn said.

Many Navy and Marine Corps C-130s were grounded as a precaution after a Marine Corps Reserve KC-130T crashed in Mississippi in July 2017, with the possibility that a propeller separated from an engine and cut through the fuselage. The crash killed 15 Marines and one Sailor.

Congress supported the Navy in procuring new propeller blades and new NP2000 propellers for the legacy C-130Ts and KC-130Ts with $121 million.

The Air Force and Navy formed an Independent Review Team at Warner Robins air logistics complex in Georgia to revamp C-130 propeller overhaul requirements, with the Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and partner-nation C-130 operators also invested in the process.

The logistics complex began build-up of 54 propellers in March in support of naval C-130s. The propellers were assembled using new production blades procured from the original equipment manufacturer who currently is increasing delivery from 30 a month to 48 a month by October, Air Force Lt. Gen. Donald E. Kirkland, commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center, also testifyied at the hearing.

The Navy also is upgrading the mission systems of its C-130s.

“For fiscal 2019 the Navy requested $28.5 million for avionics and communications obsolescence upgrades to keep the aircraft compliant with FAA and ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization] standards to be able to enter air traffic management systems throughout the world,” Conn said. “These modernization efforts are critical to maintaining Navy logistics support to our deployed forces.”

The Navy completed procurement of the C-130Ts in 1996.

“We’re now looking at recapitalizing our effort beginning with advance procurement and buying three [C-130J] aircraft in FY ’23,” Conn said.

PASCAGOULA, Miss. — Huntington Ingalls Industries’ (HII’s) Ingalls Shipbuilding division received a $97 million fixed-price contract from the U.S. Coast Guard on Sept. 28 to purchase long-lead materials for an 11th national security cutter (NSC).

“Every National Security Cutter built at Ingalls Shipbuilding is an immediate and important defender of America’s shores when it joins the fleet,” said Ingalls Shipbuilding President Brian Cuccias. “This long-lead material award is critical to the efficient production of these platforms and to the health of our 422 suppliers in 40 states. We look forward to building and delivering another quality ship for the Coast Guard.”

The advance procurement funds will be used to purchase major components for NSC 11, such as steel, the main propulsion systems, generators, electrical switchboards and major castings.

Ingalls has delivered seven NSCs, the flagship of the Coast Guard’s cutter fleet, designed to replace the 12 Hamilton-class high-endurance cutters that entered service in the 1960s.