WASHINGTON — Maritime Administrator Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby announced
May 21 that TOTE Services Inc. of Jacksonville, Florida, has been chosen as the
vessel construction manager for the newest class of training ship, the National
Security Multi-Mission Vessel (NSMV).

TOTE Services was selected by MARAD as the construction
manager for selecting a shipyard and ensuring that commercial best practices
are utilized to deliver the NSMV on time and on budget, MARAD said in a May 21
release.

“The U.S. shipbuilding industry is vital to America’s
economic strength and security,” Buzby said. “The selection of TOTE Servicesto work with a U.S. shipyard to deliver this class of vessels is an
investment in our nation’s vital maritime infrastructure and underscores our
mission to foster and promote the U.S. Merchant Marine.”

The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act directed MARAD
to “provide for an entity other than the Maritime Administration to contract
for the construction of the NSMV.” This procurement process has allowed MARAD
to leverage existing marketplace expertise and target companies experienced in
the production of innovative U.S.-built ships.

“The construction of this new NSMV will continue to showcase
our nation’s shipbuilding standard of excellence,” Buzby said. “Ultimately, it
will provide an excellent training platform for future generations of
mariners.”

TOTE Services is a full-service company that will oversee
and manage the detailed design, construction, testing and delivery of the final
NSMV. The NSMV is a new class of purpose-built ships to provide for the
replacement of the current training ships at the State Maritime Academies
(SMA). SMA training ships are primarily used to meet regulatory requirements
for training standards and to offer at-sea training experiences.

Upon award of the contract, TOTE Services will issue a
request for proposal to shipyards. Pursuant to the contract, the company is
expected to select a shipyard within six months of the VCM contract award and
will begin the management oversight of the final vessel design and
construction, with an expected delivery date of fall 2022.

The NSMV will feature numerous instructional spaces and a
full training bridge and have space for up to 600 cadets to train in a maritime
academic environment at sea.

In addition to serving as an educational platform, the NSMV
will also be available to support federal government responses to national and
international disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. In this role, the
NSMV will be equipped to support major federal relief and response efforts,
providing hospital facilities, a helicopter landing pad and berthing for up to
1,000 first responders and recovery workers. The vessel’s roll-on/roll-off ramp
and crane to facilitate container storage will enable it to provide critical
supplies to damaged port facilities.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Artificial intelligence in all its forms, from machine learning algorithms to unmanned systems, is a sure thing for the sea services and its partners, but there is still much to determine in terms of the technological and operational challenges it presents for warfighting.

In a panel discussion on May 8 at Sea-Air-Space, U.S. Coast
Guard Rear Adm. David Dermanelian, assistant commandant for C4IT and commander
of Coast Guard Cyber Command, framed the conversation as a relevant, real-world
issue for the sea services.

“This is not the art of the future. It’s happening today,” Dermanelian
said.

U.S. Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Christian Wortman, vice chief
of naval research, said the Corps has an expansive approach to AI and is
seeking to embed it into everything the service does, including machine
learning to make war more efficient and help make more informed decisions. But
he stressed that users “can’t look at this in isolation,” and the Marines also
need enhanced network capabilities and to use the cloud so algorithms can take
advantage of the data that is harvested.

U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Casey Morton, who was on day three of
his job as program executive officer of Unmanned and Small Combatants, said his
service is “firmly” moving in the direction of adding more unmanned elements to
its assets, from unmanned surface vehicles to unmanned underwater vehicles and
beyond.

“They are going to be a part of our team,” Morton said. “It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when and how fast and how can we get there.”

Right now, he believes the Navy is not yet at human-machine
teaming but is working toward that future where Sailors and machines work
closely together. He cautioned that there are still a lot of unanswered
questions about AI, like what infrastructure it will need, where it will be
based in the fleet, how it will be supported, if it will be forward-deployed
and other policy issues.

“We are at the early stages of this still,” Morton said. “There
are a lot of questions here that are still unanswered.”

The U.S. Maritime Administration’s Christopher Walher, who
focuses on the education programs of MARAD’s six state maritime academies, sees
AI as a pedagogical challenge, since sometimes subject matter experts are too
advanced to be excellent teachers, often skipping over critical points that, to
them, appear obvious.

He prefers a “crawl, walk, run” approach to the training
pipeline, where MARAD leverages a training process so AI can manage what it
excels at and humans can focus on their strengths, much like the current relationship
between smartphones and users.

Key for MARAD going forward will be working with other organizations, including a meeting the agency has next month with AI experts so they can share information, versus starting from ground zero on research and development.

“As we talk about crawl, walk, run in the Maritime
Administration, we are the little ship that could,” he said. “We don’t have a
lot of money for R&D.”

Steven Escaravage, senior vice president for the Strategic
Innovation Group at Booz Allen Hamilton, briefly went over his company’s 60
current programs that involve machine learning and robotics, including areas
like sensor data processing, electronic warfare, predictive maintenance and
optimized planning.

Escaravage said the field of AI in the last six to 12 months
has focused on taking what has been written about and researched in the lab and
tried to operationalize those concepts so they can be used in real-world
environments. He said while AI has suffered from being overhyped, there are
some rich capabilities for it today.

“Although today’s capabilities are probably over-extended
and somewhat brittle, what’s going to happen in a matter of months is going to
be real capability that changes pretty much everything we do.”

NATIONAL HARBOR,
Md. — The nation’s strategic sealift has languished for too many years, a panel
of experts told an audience May 7 at Sea-Air-Space 2019. And the panel,
representing the military and civilian sea services, told the morning program attendees
that the time for revitalizing sealift is now. 

Countering the
somewhat bleak picture they drew, they all expressed optimism with the fact
that the issue is finally garnering the attention it deserves. 

“We are facing one
of the greatest maritime challenges in U.S. history,” said Kevin Toharsky, the
associate administrator of the U.S. Maritime Administration, who moderated the
panel. “The good news is the sea power we need … is back on the radar screen.”

Toharsky outlined
the significant decline in the number of U.S.-flagged merchant ships, which
meant the loss of jobs for mariners. The commercial fleet is essential to the
nation’s commerce and national security, he said. Commercial cargo of fuel and
goods rely on it, as does the military. In contrast, potential adversaries like
China are bolstering their maritime industries — and their world presence in
the process, he said. 

“I’m encouraged by
the greater awareness … and the conversation about the problem,” said Coast
Guard Rear Adm. John Nadeau, who is assistant commandant for prevention policy. 

Resolution,
however, “won’t be easy,” Nadeau said. “The material condition [of the merchant
fleet] didn’t happen overnight and won’t be corrected overnight.”

Ensuring that the
parties involved — including military and commercial stakeholders — are
striking the right partnerships, engaging in transparency and carrying out open
and frank dialogues, will set the nation on the right track, Nadeau said. 

“We need industry
support,” said Erica Plath, the Navy’s director of strategic mobility, as she
described the Navy’s plans to modernize its fleet of deep-sea transports through
the acquisition of both new and refurbished older vessels.

Chris Thayer, director
of ship management at Military Sealift Command, alluded to a downward trend in
available sealift capacity during the past two years. 

The command is
implementing a “robust effort” to restore readiness that would require a
holistic approach to address aging ships and construction and refurbishment
efforts as well as crew-training requirements. 

Capt. Christian Spain, vice president of government relations for the American Maritime Officers Union, said revitalization is essential if the nation intends to address the current shortage of 1,800 merchant seamen.

“It doesn’t affect
sealift at the initial [point],” Spain said. “But at four to six months, it
does.” 

Similar to submarines, merchant ships require two crews that rotate sea tours, Spain said. The crew shortage figure has been steady since 2013, he said, but would increase to 2,000 within the next two to three years if not addressed.

“The time is now,” Spain said.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — As the nation grapples with striking a balance between competing with great power challenges and preparing for the possibility of conflict, the Indo-Pacific region poses perhaps the most significant challenge, Dr. Mara Karlin believes.

Karlin, director
of strategic studies at the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies, made
that observation as she introduced a panel of four military and civilian
government experts, each of whom plays a key role in formulating related
policies in the region. 

It stands to
reason that each panelist recognized the increasing threats posed by China and
Russia. Still, they noted that the matrix is considerably more complicated.
Eyes cannot be focused on the two large superpowers at the expense of other
friendly nations in the region. Also, while China and Russia loom as potential
adversaries, it is imperative that the U.S. and its partners work as closely
together with them on areas of common interest. 

Representing the
Coast Guard and Marine Corps, Vice Adm. Linda Fagan and Gayle Von Eckartsburg discussed
how each respective service shares a forward-deployed mission that makes their
presence essential in the Pacific. Both Fagan and Von Eckartsburg emphasized
that neither service is a “garrison force.”

“The Coast Guard
has never been more relevant,” said Fagan, the service’s Pacific Area
commander. “The demand for the signal we bring into the region has never been
higher.”

Besides watching
Chinese and Russian activities and fostering goodwill among allies, Fagan
placed equal importance in “modeling legitimate behavior,” so that “China can
see what a responsible Coast Guard looks like.” 

If the Chinese can
learn from the U.S. Coast Guard how to conduct, for example, more effective
search-and-rescue operations, so be it. 

Von Eckartsburg,
director of the Marine Corps Pacific Division office of Plans, Policy and
Operations, described a “persistent forward force.” Of the roughly 40,000
Marines now deployed around the world, the vast majority is west of the
International Dateline, she said. 

“We’re in a constant state of motion, leveraging presence to maintain readiness
at the same time,” Von Eckartsburg said. 

Joel Szabat the
Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Aviation and International Affairs,
discussed the three most important “pillars” of stability in the region –
economy, governance and security. 

“We need to
remember that this is not about containing or encircling any one country,”
Szabat said. “We want to help people, regardless of who our competitors are.”

Security commitments
with U.S. allies would assure the free flow of commerce, Szabat said. The
nation faces significant related challenges in this arena, he believes. U.S.
sealift is old and needs to be recapitalized, he said. The size of the U.S.
merchant fleet, which handles much of the military’s sealift capability, is
good enough for small-to-medium operations. 

“We don’t have
enough mariners, or U.S.-flagged merchant marine,” Szabat said.  

Walter Douglas,
who heads the State Department Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, cited
an Asian Development Bank statistic that states the region needs an estimated
$1.7 trillion in investment to sustain healthy economic growth. 

“There’s nowhere
near that amount of money available in one state,” Szabat said. 

The emphasis,
then, would be to have “money centers” and corporations step in with
“transparent” investments. The government and private sectors would ensure that
such funding would not be subject to the troubles endemic to secret
deals. 

“That money gets
spent in the wrong places,” Szabat said. “We can’t have that. We need open
governance. We have to see [to it] that investment laws are transparent.”

Equally
imperative, Douglas said, is working to ensure that investments are evenly
distributed. While putting money into traditional stable partners like Japan,
Australia and Singapore would remain important, more could be done to help open
emerging economies. He said that Vietnam, for example, badly wants help
developing its infrastructure – from anywhere but China.  

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The sudden order to send the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group to the U.S. Central Command theater in response to threats from Iran is a great example of the value of the Navy’s dynamic deployment concept, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John M. Richardson said at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space 2019 exposition.

Although the
Lincoln’s deployment into the Mediterranean had been planned, “this is a great
demonstration of what we’ve been working on, dynamic deployment,” Richardson
said May 6. Naval maneuver forces are “dynamic by design,” but Richardson said
he found it encouraging that if the national command authority needed the
Lincoln strike group to go to the Middle East it can do so immediately.

At the opening
session of the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space exposition, Richardson
responded to a question about National Security Advisor John Bolton’s
announcement that the administration had ordered the Lincoln and its escorts to
cut short its planned Mediterranean exercise and sail to the Persian Gulf
region after warnings that Iran may be planning attacks on U.S. forces. Bolton
said an Air Force bomber unit also was being sent to the region.

Asked how the
Navy would respond to President Donald Trump’s decision to reverse the 2020
budget proposal to skip the mid-life refueling of the aircraft carrier Harry S.
Truman, Richardson noted that he had told Congress, which has opposed the
decision, that the Truman’s early retirement was reversable. “Now we will have
to find the resources going forward,” to invest in the new technologies, such
as unmanned systems, that were to be funded with money saved from retiring
Truman.

Appearing on the
same panel, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert B. Neller agreed with
Richardson that the challenge of effective leaders was to anticipate the need
to change their organizations and policies, rather than waiting to respond to a
disaster. Neller cited the changes the Marines are making to respond to the
growing threats of cyber and electronic warfare attacks from peer competitors
as an example. The first shot of a major conflict would be against the networks
and the U.S. forces must prepare to operate without the assured communications
they have become accustomed to, Neller said.

Also on the
panel, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz said his service was engaging
in more national security operations, such as the recent freedom of navigation
transit of the Taiwan Straits, in addition to its heavy load of maritime
security and safety missions. Schultz said the Coast Guard was looking forward
to getting its first new Arctic icebreaker and hoped to get initial funding for
a second one in the fiscal 2021 budget.

Retired Rear Adm.
Mark Busby, administrator of the Maritime Administration, said the materiel
readiness of his 46 sealift vessels, which have an average age of 44 years, had
gotten a bit worse since his warnings last year. Busby was hopeful Congress
would fund the three-part program MARAD and the Navy have urged to modernize
his fleet by updating some ships, buying some newer commercial ships and
building a small number of vessels. Asked about the threat to global
shipbuilding industry from China’s rapidly growing ship production
capabilities, Busby said U.S. shipbuilding survived only due to Navy production
and commercial ships for the Jones Act, which required U.S. built ships for
commerce between U.S. ports.

WASHINGTON — The nation’s seaborne logistics capability is atrophying and in need of rejuvenation, senior government officials said in testimony before Congress. Maintaining older ships is proving more costly than anticipated, driving officials to seek new or used ships to replace some in the current inventory.

Testifying March 7 before a joint hearing of the Seapower and Projections Forces subcommittee and Readiness subcommittee of the House Armed Service Committee were Army Gen. Steve Lyons, commander, U.S. Transportation Command, and retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark Buzby, administrator of the Maritime Administration (MARAD), a Department of Transportation agency that maintains the Ready Reserve Force (RRF), a fleet of sealift and specialized ships available on a reduced operational status for call up to service.

Of interest are the 46 ships of the RRF and the 15 sealift ships operated by the Military Sealift Command. The average age of the RRF ships is 44 years and are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Of the RRF ships, 21 are steam-powered, an obsolescent propulsion technology for which qualified mariners to operate it are decreasing in numbers.

Lyons noted that commercial ship companies look to retire ships at the 15-year mark to avoid the maintenance and repair costs of older ships.

He said the readiness of the 15 surge sealift roll-on/roll-off ships currently is only 65 percent.

“The need to recapitalize is urgent,” Lyons said. “I believe accelerating the used vessel purchases with the authority … Congress provided in the last two years is the most practical way ahead.”

Buzby said the key to sustaining sealift capability is the “acquisition and conversion of used ships for the RRF, beginning with the purchase of two vessels as authorized by the FY [fiscal year] ’18 NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act].”

He said that in January the Navy, in coordination with U.S. Transportation Command, “provided MARAD with the desired characteristics for replacement ships to be acquired from the commercial market. MARAD then released a request for information to identify suitable ships, and responses are due back [on March 16].”

Buzby said that of the 50,000 large, oceangoing commercial vessels in the world, 181 sail under the U.S. flag, including 82 vessels operating exclusively in international trade and the remainder in domestic trade. He said that these commercial ships are critical to sustaining the employment base for mariners for the RRF. He also noted that of 82 U.S.-flag ships in international trade, MARAD’s Maritime Security Program helps sustain a fleet of 60 militarily useful ships with mariners fully qualified for sealift operations.

“I am deeply concerned about our ability to muster an adequate number of mariners to operate the sealift fleet for surge and sustainment operations during a mobilization lasting about six months,” Buzby said.

Buzby said the Navy is funding some service-life extensions (SLEPs) of MARAD ships, but “the pace of repair is outpacing the pace of service-life extension,” noting that many of the repairs involve structural steel repairs. “We’re not making any headway toward extending that service life.”

He said that the SLEPs for each ship cost from $800,000 to $3.5 million, and often three times what was budgeted.

Service-life extensions are not returning the investment that we thought,” Lyons said.

Buzby said that used ships vary in cost “from $25 million, maybe to $60 million” depending on age “and a new ship is 26 times that.”

“If you look at the investments the Navy in the out-years, it’s very, very hard to compete a sealift new-build that is 26 times as expensive as an acquired used [ship] solution,” Lyons said.

New or used roll-on/roll-off ships are the primary recapitalization requirement for sealift, Buzby said.

ARLINGTON, Va. — President Trump has issued an executive order easing the path for active-duty military personnel and veterans who want to transition to service as merchant mariners, a move designed to open jobs to veterans while strengthening national security.

The executive order, issued March 4, stated its purpose as promoting “employment opportunities for United States military veterans while growing the cadre of trained … mariners available to meet … requirements for national and economic security.”

Many current and former sailors and Coast Guardsmen have extensive experience in ship-handling, navigation and engineering applicable to service in the merchant marine, but in the past, they have faced bureaucratic obstacles and expenses in the thousands of dollars to make the transition.

“It is the policy of the United States to support practices and programs that ensure that members of the United States armed forces receive appropriate credit for their military training and experience, upon request, toward credentialing requirements as a merchant mariner,” the order stated. “It is further the policy of the United States to establish and maintain an effective merchant marine program by providing sufficient support and resources to active-duty and separating service members who pursue or possess merchant mariner credentials.”

The order continued: “A robust merchant marine is vital to the national and economic security of the United States. Credentialed United States merchant mariners support domestic and international trade, are critical for strategic defensive and offensive military sealift operations and bring added expertise to federal vessel operations. Unfortunately, the United States faces a shortage of qualified merchant mariners. As our strategic competitors expand their global footprint, the United States must retain its ability to project and sustain forces globally. This capability requires a sufficient corps of credentialed merchant mariners available to crew the necessary sealift fleet. Attracting additional trained and credentialed mariners, particularly from active-duty service members and military veterans, will support … national security requirements and provide meaningful, well-paying jobs to … veterans.”

Trump ordered the secretaries of defense and homeland security to, within a year, identify all military training and experience within the applicable service that may qualify for merchant mariner credentialing and submit a list of military training and experience to the Coast Guard National Maritime Center to determine whether such training and experience counts for credentialing purposes.

The secretaries also are to provide for waiver of licensing fees for active-duty personnel and pay for Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) cards.

WASHINGTON — Maritime Administrator Mark Buzby announced Jack Buono as the new superintendent for the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy Nov. 2. Buono will take command at the academy on Nov. 9. He most recently served as president and CEO of ExxonMobil’s shipping subsidiary, SeaRiver Maritime Inc.

“As a Kings Point graduate who spent his entire career in maritime leadership roles, Mr. Buono will help educate and inspire the next generation of maritime cadets,” Buzby said.

Following his graduation from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Buono worked his way up from a U.S. Coast Guard-licensed third mate to an unlimited master mariner with ExxonMobil Corp. In 1991, he transferred ashore and, after rising through several management positions, was elected to president and CEO of SeaRiver, where he served until his retirement in 2016 after 38 years with ExxonMobil and SeaRiver.

“Jack Buono is the ideal candidate to take the Academy to the next level,” Buzby said. “He has impeccable credentials on the waterfront and, as an alumnus, fully understands the academy’s mission to provide its students with the highest caliber of training and education needed to lead afloat and ashore.”

Buono received a Bachelor of Science in marine transportation with a minor in management from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in 1978 and was commissioned an ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve, where he served for 11 years.

The U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York is one of the five federal service academies. This year, it celebrates its 75th anniversary, having been dedicated in September 1943 to provide the nation with a steady source of highly trained merchant marine officers and naval reserve officers. Today, graduates serve not only in the commercial merchant marine, but also on active duty in all branches of the armed forces.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration is responsible for overseeing the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, including the hiring of key academy positions. As part of the selection process, Buono met with a number of midshipmen, faculty and staff from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, in addition to alumni and industry leaders.