NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Citing recent high-profile comments
by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John M. Richardson and Marine Corps
Commandant Gen. Robert B. Neller on cybersecurity’s importance, panelists at a
May 7 event at Sea-Air-Space agreed that it is a top issue for their services,
regardless of external perceptions.

Coast Guard Rear Adm. David Dermanelian, assistant
commandant for C4IT and commander of Coast Guard Cyber Command, said his branch
is known for its drug interdictions and waterway management missions, but often
perception does not equate that work with cybersecurity.

“All those missions are directly linked to the cyber domain,”
he said. “And I would posit that even within the Coast Guard, we’re in contact
with bad actors, or the enemy, every day. The Coast Guard’s role is to defend
our maritime transportation, our cyber domain.”

Detailing how maritime commerce coming through U.S.
waterways is valued at $5.4 trillion and supports 31 million Americans,
Dermanelian quantified the importance of cybersecurity for fellow panelist,
Maritime Administration Director of the Office of Maritime Security Cameron
Naron. 

Naron said it’s critical MARAD has cyber systems, as well as
resilient measures, in place should anything under their purview be
compromised. With MARAD sitting at the crux of defense, homeland security and
commerce, his office is focusing on working with all its stakeholders to
maintain security.

“Our role is really to make sure that industry’s needs,
industry’s equities, are represented in federal policy formulations,” Naron
said.

Naron said commercial network monitoring and vulnerability
remediation options are out there today, and there are also great government
solutions, and those resources need to be in the hands of industry, not only
because it’s good for business, but because it’s good for national security. MARAD
also must ensure the security of the Ready Reserve Fleet, and Naron stressed
that cyber concerns also extend to areas such as precision navigation and GPS
vulnerability.

Gregg Kendrick, Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command executive
director, addressed his service’s complex network of cybersecurity operations
and how that information is critical to the Marines’ return to its roots.

“Just like the Coast Guard, we have a little of a unique
mission as well. … The commandant and the chief of naval operations are
exceedingly … bringing us out of the ground force and bringing us back to our
naval heritage,” Kendrick said. That makes the fidelity of the information the
Marines and Navy share when they go from sea and ashore critical so the
services can make that gap as seamless as possible, he said.

Kendrick also addressed how the Marines are staffing up
their cybersecurity teams, when industry hiring is so competitive. He said 40%
of the Corps’ cyber mission force is civilian, stating that Neller wanted to
use best business practices from people that work for companies like Google or
other software developers to ensure the Marines had cutting-edge tactics.

The moderator, Navy Vice Adm. Matthew Kohler, deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare and director of naval intelligence, summed up the vastness of the challenge of keeping up with cybersecurity needs, and how it’s directly tied to the larger challenges the sea services face. “Technology is running at us at an unprecedented rate. … It’s not just the pace of the technology, it’s the race for how quickly we can adopt that technology … to how we fight and [it] gives us the ‘Great Power Competition’ that we find ourselves in today,” he said.

NATIONAL HARBOR,
Md. — The Navy is on track to award a contract for its new training helicopter by
the end of this calendar year, and Leonardo Helicopters believes it is in a
great position to win that competition, Andrew Gappy, director of the firm’s
Navy and Marine Corps programs, said May 7.

Leonardo is
offering the TH-119, a modified version of its widely used commercial
helicopter, which is serving as a trainer for the Portuguese Air Force and
Israel, Gappy said. A former Marine helicopter pilot, Gappy said the 119 has
the advantage of being the only one of the three competitors that is made in America,
at Leonardo’s full-service plant in Philadelphia. It also has a rugged, nearly
all metal airframe that can take the rough handling commonly endured by
training aircraft and has a single engine, which will reduce the long-term
maintenance and operating cost, he said.

Also competing to
replace the Navy’s current TH-57, which is used to train helicopter pilots for
the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, are Airbus, with its twin-engine
H-235P3, and Bell Helicopters, with the 407 GXi, an updated version of the Bell
206, which was the basis for the TH-57.

Gappy said all
three firms have submitted their proposals, which are being evaluated by the
Navy. The contract required an in-service helicopter, a ground training system
and a long-term sustainment proposal with projected cost. The winner will
produce 130 aircraft in five years, with the first five due by the end of the
fiscal 2020.

Gappy said the
TH-119 proposal was crafted with input from a team of former military
helicopter pilots. It is the highest power-rated single-engine helo in the
U.S., meets all of the Navy’s requirement and offers a low sustainment cost.
“It’s not just what the airplane can do; it’s the affordability of the
airplane,” he said.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The addition of a third Virginia-class submarine to the fiscal 2020 budget proposal won’t cause significant disruption to the industrial base because the program has given enough lead time before the sub needs to be built, the program’s manager said May 7 at Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space exposition.

Capt. Christopher Hanson, the U.S. Navy’s Virginia-class program manager, acknowledged that the decision years ago to increase procurement from one sub per year to two caused “some vendors [to] struggle,” but that the industry is able to handle a third sub because enough lead time has been built in. The addition won’t cause a shock in the production line, Hanson said.

By adding a third sub to the budget, the Navy sends a “very clear signal of what’s coming,” allowing vendors to adjust and prepare, he added.

“If they get a clear signal, they will invest,” Hanson said. “That clear signal is hard to measure, but you definitely see the results in the vendor base.”

This request will allow the Navy to immediately get orders out to the vendors so they can fill those orders. And it’s not anything they can’t handle, Hanson said, arguing that they are simply asking the industrial base to deliver 11 subs instead of 10 over the next five years.

The Navy is still striving to get construction time of Virginia-class subs down to 60 months, although it has recently stalled in the area of 66 to 68 months. Hanson said the goal is still 60 months, although he acknowledged it was not a guarantee. “Would I bet my life on 60 months? Probably not.”

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Zumwalt-class of destroyers is experiencing a series of milestones as its program continues to refine its role in the fleet, according to a May 7 briefing at Sea-Air-Space 2019. The third and final DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer was just christened in the last couple of weeks, setting it up for a 2020 delivery. The DDG-1002 was christened on April 27, Capt. Kevin Smith, DDG-1000 program manager, said. The program also conducted the first live missile firings using the Zumwalt Combat System on April 26.

The program is looking into implementing a maritime strike version of the Tomahawk missile, and they are also looking at the SM-6 Block 1A, the captain said.

The Navy expects the DDG-1000 to take on a different role in the fleet compared to how it was originally envisioned. It was slated as a ship that could operate in the littorals, but now the Navy is shifting it to a more blue-water focus, Smith said.

“We are now an offensive surface strike platform — more blue water,” he said. “The Navy made a decision to go that way.”

NATIONAL
HARBOR, Md. — The Navy’s admiral in charge of unmanned aviation said that the
Initial Operational Capability (IOC) of the MQ-25A aerial tanking unmanned
aerial vehicle is “as soon as possible.”

Speaking May
6 to an audience at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space exposition here, Rear Adm.
Brian Corey, program executive officer for unmanned aviation and strike
weapons, said that the MQ-25A program does not have a set IOC date but that it
was to be before 2026 “if we can.”

The
Boeing-owned MQ-25 prototype was trucked earlier this week from the factory in
St. Louis to Mid-America airport in Illinois for more ground testing and,
eventually, flight testing.

Corey said
the first flight of the prototype would take place later this year.

He also said that four
aircraft carriers initially will be equipped to operate the MQ-25A, but he
declined to speculate which carrier, citing the flexibility of schedules.

NATIONAL HARBOR,
Md. — As head of expeditionary warfare at the Naval Information Warfare Center
Atlantic, Kevin Charlow constantly is on the lookout for ways to share good
results with as many potential users as possible. 

“We’re focused on
trying to deliver capability to the fleet faster — by leveraging our exercise
and prototype efforts,” Charlow said during a May 7 interview at Sea-Air-Space
2019. 

To that end,
Charlow pointed to a recent case involving a precision navigation unit developed
for a U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) combat craft. It turned out that
the Marine Corps had a need for a similar unit, for use in its Amphibious
Assault Vehicles (AAV). 

“We were able to
take that integrated navigation and control capability — one of our SOCOM
projects – and leverage that with the Marine Corps AAV,” Charlow said.
“Basically, one sponsor funded a solution we’re now sharing with another, and
we have a potential win for the warfighters.”

The Marines are testing
the system now in Charleston, South Carolina, harbor. 

“Pressing forward,
we want to deliver C4ISR [command, control, communications, computer,
intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance], and its system and engineering
services and solutions, to our major sponsors,” Charlow said.   

The Navy, Marine
Corps and SOCOM are primary benefactors, but the Naval Information Warfare center
has helped the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army as well. 

Besides
advances in development of C4ISR prototypes, the center has awarded some $9
million in funding for 20 innovation projects for fiscal year 2019, which began
Oct. 1. Its engineers also built and installed a more robust firewall in the
Marine Corps’ SIPR (secret internet protocol router) network. The center was
able to fulfill an urgent need for the Marines within 10 months.

NATIONAL HARBOR,
Md. — As the naval services tackle the overlapping challenges of trying to
restore their readiness while preparing for a new era of “Great Power Competition,”
perhaps their biggest concerns are receiving adequate funding and recruiting
and retaining the talented personnel they need in the midst of a robust
national economy with low unemployment.

While the money
concerns are high for the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps, after several years
of constrained budgets, the problem is more acute for the U.S. Coast Guard and
the U.S. Maritime Administration, which have not benefited as much from the
last two years of increased funding, officials from those services said in a May
7 session at Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space exposition.

The Navy’s biggest
challenge is “maintaining stable and predictable budgets,” said Rear Adm. John
Nowell, director of military personnel plans and policy on the Navy staff.

Compared to low
readiness the Navy endured in 2017 after several lean years, “with the money
Congress has provided since then, we have been able to get at” the readiness low
with higher operating hours, more maintenance and beginning to fill the manning
gaps at sea, he said.

Brig. Gen.
Christian Wortman, commander of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, said
the Corps was challenged in maintaining the high personnel readiness it needed
because of the intense deployment rate of its small force, but was “seeing the
results” in better equipment readiness due to the budget gains in fiscal years
2018 and 2019.

But sustained
funding improvement was needed to support the modernization that would provide
future readiness required to face the Great Power Competition, he said.

“I wish I had the
budget environment you described,” said Rear Adm. Linda Fagan, commander of the
Coast Guard Pacific Region. Because the Coast Guard is part of the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, it hasn’t enjoyed the budget boost the branches
under the Defense Department received the last two years, Fagan noted.

She cited a $1.7 billion
backlog in facility repairs as a readiness issue and the “erosion of buying
power every year” from constrained funding. “It is absolutely critical to stop
the erosion of readiness we see today,” Fagan said.0

Shashi Kumar,
deputy administrator of the Maritime Administration, noted the badly aged fleet
of sealift ships that would be essential to supporting any major crisis
deployment of U.S. forces, a shrinking number of commercial vessels MARAD
leases and the growing shortage of qualified civilian mariners to operate those
ships. He also worried about the rising cost of maintaining the ancient ships
with limited funding.

All of the officials
expressed personnel concerns — which for the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard
primarily involve attracting young Americans with the intelligence and
technical skills needed for the new era of high-tech warfare when the small
numbers of those who can qualify for military service are in high demand in the
private sector.

Fagan said the
Coast Guard can recruit the talented and diverse personnel it needs but has
trouble retaining its female workforce. Nowell said the Navy still needs to
fill 6,000 billets at sea, less than half its shortfall two years ago. Wortman
said the Marines Corps has been able to sign up the 38,000 recruits it needs
each year but is challenged to retain those with the unique skills — such as
cyber — because of the higher pay that private industry can offer.

Kumar said MARAD’s problems
in finding and keeping qualified civilian mariners is aggravated by the
shrinking American-flagged commercial fleet and the fact that much of the
government fleet was on standby most of the time, limiting the trained
personnel’s ability to stay current.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — George Washington spoke May 6 at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space exposition — by way of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John M. Richardson, who used a famous quote by the Founding Father from 1781 to remind the audience of the necessity today — more than ever — of a “decisive” U.S. Navy.

Washington’s quote is, “Without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.”

“The Navy was there at the very beginning. We’re in the
nation’s DNA,” the 31st CNO told the audience, delivering a bit of a history
lesson during a keynote that also touched on Thomas Jefferson’s belief that a potent
Navy was essential to protect trade, commerce and the American economy.

“America depends on the seas,” Richardson said.

Much of the nation’s economy, he reminded the audience, runs through the Far East now. He talks often these days about the resurgent “Great Power Competition” — and the CNO wasted no time doing so again at Sea-Air-Space, reminding the audience of China’s naval expansion and mentioning such events as recent Chinese missile exercises in the Mediterranean and Baltic Sea.

“That’s where your Navy is going to be,” Richardson said,
adding that a third of world trade runs through the South China Sea. “That’s
why the United States Navy is there.”

He also mentioned Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, who believed
the Navy’s role is to deter conflict but still ensure prosperity.

Richardson took part in ceremonies before his keynote address to laud recipients of two Navy League awards — including one that is named after Nimitz and honors an industry leader who has made a major contribution to the nation’s maritime strength.

The Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz Award for 2019 went to
James Herdt, CEO of Herdt Consulting and a retired Master Chief Petty Officer
of the Navy. “I know my name is on this award,” Herdt said, but in thanking
Navy League he accepted it on behalf of the people of his consulting firm.

The second honor of the day, the Albert A. Michelson Award,
went to Dr. Bruce G. Danly, director of research at the Naval Research Laboratory
(NRL). He credited the men of women of NRL, “who ensure that our forces have
the best technology, unmatched by none.”

Navy League National President Alan Kaplan and Navy League Executive Director Mike Stevens, also a retired Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy, the 13th, helped present the Nimitz and Michelson awards. Richardson also spoke about the Navy’s recruiting and retention in a recovering economy and added that the sea service has met its recruiting goals for more than 12 years in a row. “What is it that attracts people” to the Navy? the CNO asked. “Honorable and glorious, no better organization to join than the Navy to espouse those two ideals.”

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Longtime unmanned aircraft provider
AeroVironment and Kratos Defense and Security Systems announced on March 7 that
they have formed a new partnership to jointly develop and demonstrate unmanned aircraft
systems that could launch from another UAS to tackle near-peer denied
environments — an increasingly important domain in light of the “Great Power
Competition” era, defined by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John M. Richardson.

This collaboration aims at demonstrating the ability to launch,
communicate with and control a small, tube-launched loitering aircraft that
jettisons from a larger, runway-independent UAS. The goal of the is to
coordinate the effects of smaller AeroVironment systems and relay information
back to the mother UAS, developed by Kratos.

The systems-of-systems would communicate back their findings
to a ground-control station or be able to act upon the information they gather
to modify their mission tasks. Kratos has demonstrated the mothership, its Mako
Tactical UAS, which it developed and demonstrated in 2015, and AeroVironment
has made its tube-launched Switchblade since 2012.

“Together, we are developing and will demonstrate the
integration of tube-launched UAS and tactical missile systems into long-range,
high-speed and low-cost unmanned systems for their transport and delivery into
near-peer, denied environments,” said Trace Stevenson, vice president and
deputy general manager of AeroVironment’s UAS business.

“With sufficient onboard autonomy, sensors, payloads and an
integrated system design, we aim to demonstrate the deployment of large
quantities of smart systems that overwhelm and disable enemy systems, while
bending the cost curve to make it financially prohibitive for unfriendly
nations to challenge our armed forces.”

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.
– Future naval aviation will benefit from the fifth-generation F-35s,
manned-unmanned teaming and the possibility of greatly enhanced rotary wing
aircraft being developed under the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program, a panel
of Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard officials said.

The naval
services also are focusing on improving the readiness of their existing
aircraft, and some types of aircraft are coming close to meeting the 80% readiness
goal set by former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, the officials told a forum on
the future of naval aviation at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space
exposition May 6.

Lt. Gen. Steven
Rudder, deputy Marine Corps commandant for aviation, said the Corps’ legacy
FA-18 Hornets hit the 80% readiness mark last week and were maintaining
availabilities in the high 70% rate. And the Corps’ new F-35Bs were operating
in the 70% range during their recent deployments in the western Pacific, Rudder
said.

Angie
Knappenberger, deputy director for naval warfare, said the Navy conducted a
study to determine what would be needed to improve readiness and found that “we
wouldn’t get there unless we changed our processes.” They have had to improve
their support infrastructure, which had suffered from the years of reduced
funding under sequestration and on the spare parts supply system, she said.

Looking to the
future, Rudder, Knappenberger and Vice Adm. Daniel Abel, the Coast Guard deputy
commandant for operations and a veteran helicopter pilot, all cited unmanned
systems they were looking to add.

“Autonomy is
really hard, but there are some things you can do,” and they are seeing a lot
of focus on manned-unmanned teaming, Knappenberger said. She cited the Navy’s
teaming of the MQ-8 Fire Scout UAS and MH-60s helicopters in a squadron and
will do the same thing with the MQ-4C Triton long-range UAS and the P-8A patrol
aircraft.

Rudder said the
Marines were narrowing their focus on requirements for their primary unmanned
aircraft program, the Marine Air-Ground Task Force Unmanned Expeditionary
system, commonly called MUX, which is to be a large Group 5 rotary-wing UAS
that can operate from amphibious ships. After initially looking at a wide range
of capabilities, including strike, the Marines currently are leaning toward an
early warning platform that could provide over-the-horizon surveillance and
network communications for the expeditionary task forces.

Rudder said the
Marines also are closely monitoring the Army-led FVL program, which is intended
to produce a rotary-wing manned aircraft with much higher speed and range than
current helicopters. Although the two prototypes being produced for the FVL
program are a composite helicopter and a tilt-rotor, Rudder said the Marines’
preference is a tilt-rotor because they know their tilt-rotor MV-22 Ospreys are
fast and they want something that can keep up with them.

Abel said the Coast Guard has been testing
contractor-operated Scan Eagle UAS on their national security cutters and are
looking at other unmanned systems.