ARLINGTON, Va. — Naval Air Systems Command has awarded a $3.2 billion multiyear procurement (MYP) contract to Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. for 24 E-2D Advanced Hawkeye (AHE) carrier-based early warning aircraft.

The April 10 Defense Department contract announcement “provides for the procurement of 24 full-rate production Lots 7-11 E-2D AHE aircraft.”

The new deal is the second MYP contract awarded to Northrop Grumman, the command said in a release. The Navy awarded the first in 2014 for production of 25 E-2D AHE aircraft, and Congress later increased the number to 26 aircraft.

“This is a critical element in providing the next generation of world-class command-and-control aircraft to the fleet,” Capt. Keith Hash, E-2/C-2 Airborne Tactical Data Systems Program Office (PMA-231) program manager, said in the release.

“The use of the MYP contract allows a substantial savings over the use of single-year contracts and helps us fulfill our mission to increase U.S. naval power at sea by providing our fleet the information they need to accurately plan and win the fight today and tomorrow,” he said.

The savings for MYP II are projected to be $410.6 million, or 11 percent, over the five years of the contract, the release said. “The first MYP contract saved $586.6 million, a 13.9% savings compared to the cost of five single-year procurement contracts,” according to the release.

The E-2D is replacing the E-2C in the Navy’s nine fleet carrier airborne early warning squadrons, each of which is being equipped with five aircraft, an increase of one aircraft over the four E-2Cs that equip each the squadrons yet to make the transition. The fleet E-2 aircraft are based at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, Naval Air Station Point Mugu, California, and Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan.

The Navy has a requirement for 75 E-2Ds. The service plans to purchase 24 in fiscal years 2020 through 2023. The Japanese Air Self-Defense Force also has ordered several E-2Ds.

The contract work is expected to be completed by August 2026.

WASHINGTON — The Navy’s air warfare director told Congress that some of the service’s experienced aviators are “ready” to leave the service, citing fewer flying opportunities and quality-of-life issues.

Rear Adm. Scott D. Conn, testifying April 10 before the Seapower subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, cited a Government Accountability Office report that said that Navy pilot shortage was 9% overall and 26% in first-tour aviators.

Conn said some of the shortages were tied to the grounding of T-45 jet trainers when the Navy was investigating oxygen system problems.

“We’re going to have to extend people in assignments or rotate people or, as squadrons are in the maintenance or basic phase [of training], maybe we don’t push those people to them,” Conn said.

“Some of the authorities you have given us, in terms of bonuses, the department head bonus, and the increase of rates, has had some impact across most types/models/series [of aircraft communities],” he said. “We have seen no impact in the [strike-fighter] community.”

Responding to a question about aviator accession from Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), Conn said the Navy was “bringing in our goal.”

Retention is a concern, Conn noted.

“We’re seeing a lot of experienced [aviators] — some of our best — deciding to go to other things,” he said. “We’re in a competition for talent. The airlines are continuing to hire. Some of these folks are going to grad school. Some are starting their own businesses. The economy is doing well.”

He added: “It is a challenge that we have particularly at the more senior levels.”

The Navy has every departing pilot complete a survey. Conn said that three factors are the most influential in aviator departures: First, “not doing what they signed up for — they’re not flying enough, which means we need to get our readiness where it needs to be to get them in the air. Two: some quality-of-life issues, more so in our nonfleet concentration areas, [Naval Air Station] Lemoore being one of them. Three is the pay gap.”

The U.S. Navy’s shipbuilding plans and programs came under attack in the House Armed Services Committee on April 10, with concerns about the accelerated development of a new large surface combatant and unmanned vessels, early retirement of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and constant changes in long-term plans.

House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington) cited numerous failed or troubled ship programs while questioning new proposals, a retired Navy officer doubted the Navy had “a long-term vision” for its fleet and other committee members voiced concerns about meeting combatant commanders’ needs with a reduced carrier force.

Questions and concerns also came up about delays in building two amphibious warships, the badly aged strategic sealift fleet, the cybersecurity of the supply chain and the operational impact on the Marine Corps from the hurricane damage to two North Carolina installations.

Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John M. Richardson said that, with the need to balance requirements and limited resources, they prioritized modernization to meet rising peer competitors and were working more with industry to match desired requirements with what is achievable and affordable.

The plan to retire USS Truman at midlife was a “hard choice” made to allow investments in future technologies, they said. Those investments would suffer if Congress insisted on refueling Truman for another 25 years of service, which committee members indicated they would.

Challenged by Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Virginia), a retired commander, that the frequent changes in the 30-year shipbuilding plan indicated a lack of vision, Richardson said, “yes, we have a long-term vision,” but the changes are “reflective of how much the security landscape has changed.” Spencer said the revised shipbuilding program “doesn’t bother me one bit” because it was necessary to adapt to changed conditions.

Smith, in his prepared opening statement, cited a long list of troubled Navy programs, including the planned new cruiser CG(X), which was canceled, the DDG-1000, which was cut from 21 to three ships, and the littoral combat ships (LCS), which were bought in blocks without firm requirements and have yet to be deployed with a full capability.

“I’m concerned that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past,” Smith said, listing Richardson’s “arbitrary” goal of starting construction on the new surface combatant by 2023 and the plan to buy 20 large unmanned vessels “without any requirements review, understanding of the concept of operations or how to employ weapons on unmanned vessels, including the application of the law of armed conflict.” Smith’s concerns about the unmanned vessels was echoed by Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Connecticut), chairman of the Seapower subcommittee, who asked, “Are we getting ahead of our skis?”

Spencer told Courtney: “One of things you have charged us with is to go quicker, go smarter. … We think what we have is the smart way” to put the unmanned ships into the fleet, try them, break them and learn. Richardson said the Navy leaders do have a concept for the 20 unmanned ships. But, he said, “we have to learn how to use those to go forward,” which is why the ships are in research and development.

Spencer said the Navy is determined to work closer with industry to match capabilities with what can be produced and to adopt commercial best practices. On cybersecurity, he said the Navy is good at protecting its information but is demanding that its industrial suppliers do a better job of protecting data.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert B. Neller said that despite the heavy damage inflicted by Hurricane Florence on Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point last year, the II Marine Expeditionary Force is operational but working in badly degraded conditions. He thanked Congress for reprograming $400 million to start repairs but warned that, without supplemental appropriations for the remaining $3 billion, readiness would suffer.

WASHINGTON — The Navy and Marine Corps’ strike fighter inventory shortfall is easing even as the Navy slows its aircraft procurement to pay some bills to improve readiness, the Navy’s director of air warfare told Congress.

Rear Adm. Scott D. Conn, testifying April 10 before the Seapower subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, responded to a question from Sen. Maize Hirono (D-Hawaii) as to why the Navy’s planned strike fighter procurement over the fiscal 2020 five-year Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP) was 289, compared with 308 planned in the 2019 FYDP.

“Quite frankly, some of the reduction in aircraft [was] to pay bills,” Conn said, including getting “wholeness in some weapon systems.”

“F-35 C2D2 [Continuous Capability Development and Delivery strategy] Block 4 came with a bill that we had to pay,” he said, regarding the next phase of F-35 development.

“In terms of strike fighter inventory management, our lowest point based on PB20 [President’s Budget 2020] is about a 51-aircraft deficit in [fiscal 2020],” he said. “That decreases to single digits by FY24. That is [being accomplished] through the F/A-18 procurement in PB20, the F-35C procurement in PB20 and also the service-life modernization effort, taking those Block II [Super] Hornets, making them Block III, getting them to 10,000 hours.”

Conn said the Navy finally is in a position “of buying and producing more aircraft than we are burning up every year in terms of flight hours. That’s going to allow us to get out of older airplanes, provide best-of-breed opportunities for the Marine Corps, to enable us to start to strike some of our old airplanes, [such as] Block Is that will never be Block IIIs. It provides enormous opportunity in this budget request.”

Conn also credited a sustainment system introduced in January in bringing the “‘best of industry’ to look at the various functions we do to maintain our aircraft — at the depot level, at the squadron level, how we do engineering, how we do supply — and we’ve seen some pretty good results from targeted focus in [Naval Air Station] Lemoore, California, and FRC [Fleet Readiness Center] Southwest [in Naval Station North Island, California].

He said the Navy has been able to reduce planned maintenance intervals for Super Hornets from 120 days to 60 days.

“And the quality of product is better,” he said. “It’s getting on the flight schedule in a week, let alone weeks or months. We’ve been able to reduce our turnaround time 40% for some of our highest degrader list [items]: generators, interrogators and displays in cockpits. We’ve been able to drive down backlogs in servo cylinders that were keeping our aircraft down. We had a backlog of 60 of those parts in January. We got it down to zero in March. All that is allowing us to improve the mission-capable rate.”

Conn noted that in January the Navy had about 257 mission-capable Super Hornets. “Last week, we had a high — a snapshot in time — of 304. 80% would be 320 of the roughly 400 [primary mission aircraft inventory].”

Senate Armed Services Committee members expressed concerns about the Navy’s planned early retirement of the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman and the impact of use of military funds and troops to secure the southwest border and questioned the operational status of the new Gerald R. Ford carrier.

During an April 9 hearing with the Navy Department’s top civilian and uniformed leaders, the senators also questioned the delay in building two new amphibious warships and suggested moving that procurement ahead by authorizing incremental funding for the first of the Amphibious Transport Dock (LPD) Flight IIs and the next America-class Amphibious Assault (LHA) ship.

In his opening statement, Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer announced that the three U.S. service members killed by a suicide car bombing April 8 in Afghanistan were Marines. He provided no details.

SASC Chairman Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) said there was no other Navy weapon system that matches “the reach and lethality of the carrier and its air wing” and said he was “highly skeptical” of Pentagon claims that early retirement of the Truman will result in savings.

That view was echoed by other committee members.

Questioned about the Truman decision, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John M. Richardson estimated savings of $16 billion to $17 billion if officials follow through on plans to skip the normal midlife nuclear refueling and overhaul of the carrier and retire it with 25 years of expected service life remaining.

Richardson said the Navy is completing a new future fleet study and could reverse the Truman decision if needed.

Inhofe responded: “You may need to do that.”

The Navy has heard similar views from other influential members of Congress.

Inhofe and others also questioned progress on the Ford, the first ship in a new class of nuclear-powered carriers, which is in the shipyard three years after it was expected to be operational and billions of dollars over budget.

Spencer said all 11 of the advanced weapons elevators would be installed and the other mechanical and structural problems with the Ford would be resolved when the carrier is expected to leave the shipyard in October.

Questioned later by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), Spencer insisted that “the Ford will work” and noted that it will be able to produce 30% more aircraft sorties a day than the Nimitz-class carriers and do it with fewer Sailors.

“We have a much more capable, much more lethal asset,” which was “the primary factor” in moving to the new carriers, Spencer said.

Asked if Congress provided additional money to cover refueling Truman, Spencer said he “would not turn it down.”

Questioned later by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) on whether the Navy could purchase the LPD Flight II and the LHA-9 a year earlier than the planned 2021 and 2024 starts if Congress authorized incremental funding, Spencer said they could.

Incremental funding normally is used for the most expensive ships, including carriers.

Asked about the response to growing Russian activities in the Arctic, Richardson said the Navy is conducting more exercises there, including a planned Marine amphibious landing in September to seize an airfield on the Aleutian island of Adak to allow Navy aircraft, including P-8A patrol planes, to operate.

Several senators expressed concern about the impact of the Trump administration’s plans to divert military construction funds to building the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border and the expense of sending active-duty troops there.

Spencer said he has not been given a list of Navy construction projects that would be affected by the diversion of $3.6 billion in MilCon funds but would provide his best advice on any such proposal.

Questioned about his leaked memos to Spencer about the threat to Marine readiness from several programs, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert B. Neller said the border deployment was only one of the eight factors he cited and represented only 2% of the funding shortfalls. He said he knew of no exercise that was canceled because Marines were sent to the border, although the size of one was reduced, and only one unit may have suffered reduced readiness from the border deployment, while other units gained readiness from duties there.

WASHINGTON — The Navy’s director of air warfare said the service expects to deploy the MQ-4C Triton high-altitude, high-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle later this year.

“The Triton is going forward this year, probably later this summer,” Rear Adm. Scott D. Conn, director of air warfare in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, said during an April 4 hearing of the Tactical Air and Ground Forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.

The deployment will mark the achievement of Early Operational Capability, which originally was planned for last year at Andersen Air Force on Guam for two MQ-4Cs assigned to Unmanned Patrol Squadron 19. The deployment was postponed when one of the two Tritons experienced a landing mishap on Sept. 13 at Naval Air Station Point Mugu, California.

The MQ-4C eventually will be deployed to several bases and will be used to establish five orbits — patrols — with a 24/7 presence over the oceans. Its sensors will be used to search for, detect and identify shipping and other targets of interest. The Triton will work closely with the Navy’s fleet of P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft.

“We’re going to continue to build capability and capacity with that system,” Conn said, noting that the capacity and capability need to be increased before the Navy can retire its EP-3E electronic reconnaissance aircraft in 2021. “We are on track to do that.”

WASHINGTON — The Navy’s analysis of alternatives (AoA) for its next-generation air-dominance fighter aircraft is almost finished, a Navy admiral told Congress.

“That AoA will be complete this spring,” Rear Adm. Scott D. Conn, director of air warfare in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, said during an April 4 hearing of the Tactical Air and Ground Forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.

“The final report will come out this summer, and that will inform future choices reflected in future budget cycles in terms of what we need to do to get after the lethality that we need at a cost that we can afford.”

The F/A-XX air-dominance fighter will be a sixth-generation aircraft that eventually will succeed the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet strike fighter in the Navy’s carrier air wings.

The F-35C Lightning II joint strike fighter achieved Initial Operational Capability in February and will join the Super Hornet in carrier air wings. Strike Fighter Squadron 147 is the Navy’s first fleet F-35C squadron.

Conn said the Navy expects to attain a 50-50 percentage mix of F-35Cs and F/A-18E/Fs by about 2030. The Navy has ordered 78 Block III Super Hornets and plans to modify more than 100 older Super hornets to the Block III configuration.

“Any additional resources that would be available from an F-35 perspective would provide us some buffer to meet our transition schedule as we get transition squadrons from Super Hornets into the Joint Strike Fighter,” Conn said.

WASHINGTON — A new Navy program office will centrally coordinate a plan to recapitalize its four public shipyards, the Naval Sea Systems Command Office of Corporate Communication said in an April 3 release.

The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan (SIOP) Program Office, PMS-555, established in June 2018, is working in concert with Commander, Navy Installations Command (CNIC), and Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) to recapitalize and modernize the infrastructure at the four public nuclear shipyards to include critical dry dock repairs, restoring needed shipyard facilities and optimizing their placement, and replacing aging and deteriorating capital equipment.

Executing this plan will improve the naval shipyards’ productivity and increase their maintenance throughput to support the combat readiness of the Navy.

Without major upgrades and reconfigurations, the shipyards would not be able to meet the fleet’s future aircraft carrier and submarine depot maintenance and inactivation requirements looking out through 2040.

“The Navy relies on NAVSEA to deliver combat-ready ships and submarines out of planned maintenance availabilities on time,” said NAVSEA Cmdr. Vice Adm. Tom Moore. “Modernizing our four naval shipyards — a massive task under any circumstance — is critical because it’s the only way we will be able to meet our future mission requirements.”

“This is a comprehensive plan, developed in partnership with NAVFAC and CNIC, that will allow the Navy to bring its organic shipyards into the 21st century to fully support the Navy the nation needs,” Moore added.

The Navy’s four public shipyards — Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, Virginia; Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Kittery, Maine; Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, Bremerton, Washington; and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii — were originally designed and built in the 19th and 20th centuries to support construction of sail- and conventionally-powered ships using industrial models of the time. As a result, they are not configured to maintain and modernize nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines.

Developing, programming and executing the plan falls to the PMS-555 program office, which is staffed by industrial engineers, process improvement specialists, facilities engineers, regulatory compliance specialists, strategic and financial analysts, Civil Engineer Corps officers, construction managers and construction schedulers from NAVSEA, CNIC and NAVFAC.

“The Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan articulated a vision that shipyard infrastructure has three interdependent components: the dry docks, the facilities and the capital equipment; and that these configurations are fundamentally linked to the shipyards’ ability to execute the mission they are tasked to do,” said Steven Lagana, PMS-555 program manager.

“We are utilizing modeling and simulation as a tool to integrate these components to better inform the desired infrastructure layout. Through this, the Navy will be in a better position to make meaningful, long-lasting investments that not only address the condition of the facilities and equipment but also change the way the work is conducted. Once we’re finished, the Navy will recover more than 300,000 work days per year, every year.”

The first milestone PMS-555 is scheduled to achieve is the development of a “digital twin” of the naval shipyards. This will be a virtual representation of the shipyards that will be used to conduct modeling and simulations of the shipyard environment to aid in evaluations and decisions for the future shipyard infrastructure. The program office is also developing comprehensive strategies to address historic preservation and environmental compliance during this recapitalization effort.

The program office is hosting its first industry day April 8 at the Washington Navy Yard.

“We’re sold out,” Lagana said. “We have more than 100 companies from 19 states and the District of Columbia who are coming to hear about the program and see how they can be part of this once-in-a-century team that will deliver the shipyards the Navy needs.”

PHILADELPHIA — Leonardo submitted to the U.S. Navy its proposal to manufacture and support up to 130 training helicopters, the company said in an April 2 release.

Manufactured in Philadelphia and featuring a Pratt & Whitney PT-6 engine, the TH-119 boasts the highest power margins in its class. Its Genesys Aerosystems’ avionics equip pilots to fly safely during low visibility and challenging weather while providing a foundation for transitioning to combat helicopters.

The “hot” pressure refueling in the TH-119 allows fuel tanks to be filled without shutting the engine down, leading to quicker turnaround and more time spent flying. A durable metal box-beam airframe stands up to the daily grind of training and enables repairs to be conducted on-site, unlike the repairs on most composite aircraft, which require lengthier off-site attention.

The TH-119 has completed its flight tests and meets all FAA requirements and safety standards for IFR certification. Based on the successful AW119 helicopter — in service in 40 countries and selected by military and government customers such as the Portuguese Air Force and New York City Department of Environmental Protection Police — the TH-119 is manufactured on an FAA-certified Part 21 production line within the United States. Leonardo’s Philadelphia plant also is building the U.S. Air Force MH-139 for Boeing.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy has awarded two contracts to Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. to advance the fielding of the new MQ-4C Triton high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle.

Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) on April 1 awarded a $12.8 million contract modification to upgrade three Tritons “from a baseline Integrated Functional Capability (IFC) 3 software configuration to a Multi-IFC 4 software configuration,” the contract announcement said. “This modification updates drawings and associated technical data in support of the MQ-4C IFC software configuration upgrade.”

Northrop Grumman also was awarded a $7.2 million acquisition contract modification to extend “the period of performance and provides additional funding to procure long-lead components, material, parts and associated efforts required to maintain the MQ-4C Triton Unmanned Aircraft System planned low-rate initial production Lot 4 production schedule.”

Two MQ-4Cs have been delivered to the Navy’s Unmanned Patrol Squadron 19 detachment at Naval Air Station Point Mugu, California. The Triton was slated to reach Early Operational Capability last year with a deployment to Guam, but the deployment was put on hold after one of the MQ-4Cs was damaged in a landing mishap at Point Mugu.