NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The nation’s sealift components are used to operating in peaceful seas and permissive environments but must prepare now for times when control of the seas is not assured, a panel of maritime leaders said.

Speaking Aug. 4 at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space expo at National Harbor, Maryland, were Douglas Harrington, deputy associate administrator for Federal Sealift at the Maritime Administration (MARAD); Christopher Thayer, director, Maritime Operations, Military Sealift Command (MSC); and Adam Peterson, of the government business development team at APL. The panel was moderated by Erica Plath, director, Strategic Mobility/Combat Logistics, Division, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Navy.

Thayer pointed out that sealift “capability today is far more than it was in 1990” when large numbers of sealift ships were activated for Operation Desert Storm. He said that sealift was again at an inflection point, with the Navy’ preparation for distributed maritime operations in contested environments.

He said that, during distributed operations, the nation’s maritime logistics forces may not always have escorts or overwatch and must “be prepared to operate and evade the enemy.”

Thayer also stressed the need for counter-UAS systems, anti-jam capabilities for GPS, the need for cybersecurity and the ability to operate under emissions control.

Communications is “a huge vulnerability,” Thayer said, noting that mobile communications capabilities are being deployed on some ships with tactical advisers.

Harrington also stressed the need for improved, more resilient communications capabilities for MARAD’s Ready Reserve Force (RRF). He noted the current reliance on satellite communications and the effect on morale that emissions control would have on the crews. 

To adapt to providing logistics in a contested environment, Thayer said that MSC was working on concepts such as re-loading missiles in vertical launch cells while ships are underway, underway replenishment using unmanned aerial vehicles and refueling the combat logistics ships from commercial ships using modular CONSOL (consolidated cargo replenishment) adapter kits.

Harrington discussed the need for recapitalization of the RRF MARAD’s Ready Reserve Force and new, comprehensive strategy for equipping strategic sealift with new technology and regulations. He noted the increasing size and weight of defense cargoes. He advocated building increased resilience as well as cybersecurity.

He also said the government must “recall and re-focus on naval operations in a contested environment.”

Peterson pointed out the dramatic decline of the U.S.-flag merchant marine since 1960, now less than 0.5% of the 43,000 ships (displacing 1,000 or more gross weight tons) in international trade. He stressed that the government needs to develop more incentives to keep commercial vessels available in peacetime and war.

Harrington praised the “significant period of recapitalization,” which includes the construction of first of five National Security Multi-Mission Vessels, which will replace older ships and train mariners with modern technology now found on many merchant ships.

Asked about the Navy’s plans to operate autonomous unmanned ships in its fleet, Thayer noted that it is “hard to refuel an autonomous ship at sea.”

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The U.S. Coast Guard celebrated its 231^st birthday on Aug. 4 and Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz and service officials said it is increasing cooperation with international partners, working with industry on energy projects such as wind farms and making changes to increase diversity and guard retention.

“I think it’s an exciting time for us,” Schultz said, telling the audience at Sea-Air-Space 2021, “let us figure out where we can team up with you.”

Ann Castiglione-Cataldo, director of international affairs and foreign policy, said the service is working to build capable partnerships around the world to tackle such issues as illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and climate change.

“All coast guards are grappling with this,” she said.

Rear Adm. John Mauger, assistant commandant for prevention policy, said his office is working to maintain safe use of the waterways for all users, which includes working with states and localities on installing coastal wind farms and assisting with commercial space launch operations.

There are currently only five wind turbines active off of Rhode Island and two in Virginia, Mauger said, but many more projects are in the works, and the service is advising on their location to help maintain access to waterways.

Commercial space launches are also coming to the fore. The Coast Guard helps keep waterways clear near launch sites. In the old NASA days, that just meant monitoring areas in Florida and Texas, but commercial space launches can occur from many more places, including floating platforms.

The Coast Guard has had issues with retaining female Coast Guard personnel, said Michel Godfrey, the director of civilian human resources, diversity and leadership. At one point, retention rates past the 15-year mark for women lagged behind men by 10%, but recent efforts have cut that to 3%.

One such effort is the parental leave program, which pulls in Coast Guard reservists to temporarily replace service members on maternity leave.

“They come back and they are a stronger member of the Coast Guard,” Godfrey said.

Schultz said, “Talent management is where we win or lose in the Coast Guard.”

After the presentation, Navy League National President David Reilly and CEO Mike Stevens presented Schultz with the Admiral Arleigh Burke Leadership Award, the Navy League’s highest honor. He then celebrated the Coast Guard’s founding by Alexander Hamilton with a cake.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Navy is only weeks away from its goal to achieve a mission-capable rate for its E-2D Advanced Hawkeye carrier-based command and control aircraft of 28 aircraft, a Navy program official said.

The Navy also is aiming for 22 of those 28 E-2Ds hitting and sustaining full mission capability by Sept. 1, said Capt. Pete Arrobio, the Navy’s E-2D program manager, speaking Aug. 3 at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Expo at National Harbor, Maryland.

Attaining full mission capability is no small task. Arrobio pointed out that the E-2D has 11 major mission systems to be maintained in operating condition for the aircraft to reach full mission capability.

Arrobio said the Navy has a detailed plan to add and improve capability to the E-2D fleet over time. He stressed the need in the future to move faster in upgrading the aircraft software and systems to keep them relevant to high-level warfare. Future needs include cyber hardening; connectivity to the joint all-domain command and control environment; sensor improvement; more space, weight and power capacity; improved reliability of components; and integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning where appropriate.

Northrop Grumman has delivered 48 E-2Ds to the Navy so far, out of 52 ordered so far. The U.S. Navy’s program of record calls for 86 E-2Ds. The aircraft delivered so far equip five airborne command and control (VAW) squadrons and one fleet replacement squadron, with the fleet squadrons deploying with five aircraft each. Two of those VAW squadrons have completed transition to an aerial refueling capability. Four fleet squadrons are still equipped with the E-2C Hawkeye.

Three of nine ordered by Japan have been delivered. France has signed a letter of agreement to procure three E-2Ds to replace its E-2Cs. Taiwan and Egypt, which operate E-2Cs, also are potential customers for the E-2D.

There are 26 E-2Cs remaining in the U.S. Navy’s inventory and they are scheduled for phase out by 2026. Japan, France, Taiwan and Egypt operate a total of 28 E-2Cs, which Arrobio’s office helps to sustain with program support.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Raytheon is expecting a five-year contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command for hardware production and sustainment of all variants of the SPY-6 shipboard radar, a company official said.

Raytheon anticipates the contract award in September 2021 which will cover up to 59 radars, said Scott Spence, director of Naval Radars for Raytheon, speaking to Seapower Aug. 3 at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Expo at National Harbor, Maryland.

Raytheon now is in full-rate production of the SPY-6 family of radars, building at a rate of one per month, Spence said.

The company has been able to sustain a solid rate of production despite the COVID pandemic. Mike Mills, Raytheon’s SPY-6 program director, said the company delivered 12 SPY-6 arrays in a 13-month period. 

Raytheon has delivered the first two shipsets of the SPY-6(V)1 Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR), one for the first Flight III Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, the future USS Jack H. Lucas (DDG 125) and the second, DDG 128. Spence said the company is starting deliver of parts for a third DDG.

Delivery of the first production SPY-6(V)2 rotating Enterprise Air-Search Radars (EASR) is planned Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, the future America-class amphibious assault ship USS Bougainville (LHA 8) and the future San Antonio-class amphibious platform dock ship USS Richard M. McCool Jr. (LPD 29). Installation on the latter two ships will be made post-construction, Spence said.

The fixed-face EASR, the SPY-6(V)3, is in the engineering development phase for the future Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) and subsequent carriers of that class. It also will be the EASR for the new Constellation-class guided-missile frigate.

Spence also said the expected contract will cover backfit of some Flight IIA Arleigh Burke DDG with the fixed-face SPY-6(V)4 version during the ships’ mid-life upgrades. The company already submitted the technical data package for the back-fit to the Navy.

The SPY-6 is scheduled to achieve Initial Operational Capability on the Jack H. Lucas in 2024, according to Spence.

Space and the sea perhaps would seem at first blush to be very different and disparate operating environments. Army Gen. James H. Dickinson, the man in charge of U.S. Space Command, believes otherwise.

At a luncheon and then a media roundtable at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space expo at National Harbor, Maryland, on Aug. 3, Dickinson pointed out that both environments are the harshest in which to operate. Further, both the sea and space are becoming increasingly more contested by potential adversaries.

“We each share a vast area. In the maritime domain, it’s 10,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean,” Dickinson said. “For us, it’s out to the moon and beyond. Both are concerned with respective domains that are very vast, and very difficult, complex and unforgiving.” 

As the head of the nation’s newest unified combatant command, Dickinson’s job is to use the trained men and women sent to him by the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and newly created Space Force for operational reasons in the space domain. 

“They all bring their own capabilities to the command, which we use for daily operations,” Dickinson said. 

Success hinges upon an understanding of the specific challenges space poses, Dickinson said. Space debris, whether old junk or the remnants of a Chinese satellite they deliberately destroyed a little more than a decade ago, is a prime example. 

“There are still remnants of that in lower orbit, and we’ll have that effect for years to come,” Dickinson said. “What’s important about the low Earth orbit is that’s where we do things with human spaceflight. The International Space Station is in low Earth orbit. When you talk about risk to human life, you have it when you have that type of activity going on.”

Space Force Guardians under Dickinson’s command at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, have a primary mission of tracking and mitigating such debris. The command then provides relevant information to governmental agencies and public entities that share an interest in knowing about what threats their space assets are facing. Dickinson compares the mission to that of the Federal Aviation Administration, which tracks and manages the safety of thousands of flights each day. 

“It’s an exciting time to be in the space enterprise. There’s no lack of energy,” Dickinson said. “People want to come work for us.” 

In the immediate future, Dickinson will tackle the job Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III bestowed upon him with the July issuance of five tenets of responsible space behavior, which would apply to operations, fielding acquisition and every other related aspect: One, operate in, from, to and through space with due regard to others and in a professional manner; two, limit the generation of long-lived space debris; three, avoid the creation of harmful interference; four, maintain safe separation and safe trajectory; and, five, communicate and make notifications to enhance the safety and stability of the domain.

Noting that the directive is part of a government-wide effort to address conduct in space both in the U.S. and among partner nations, Dickinson expressed hope that an international agreement to support it. 

“In the meantime, just think about how much we can learn from our Navy teammates in this regard — how we assess behavior and respond when adversaries fall short of the standards,” Dickinson said, “with the power from a position of strength to compel seafaring operations to operate within those rules.”

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The U.S. government has approved a sale of 18 CH-53K heavy-lift helicopters to Israel, and the program hopes to get them to Israel by the mid-2020s, according to an official.

The U.S. State Department cleared the $3.4 billion sale just a few days ago. Col. Jack Perrin, program manager for H-53 helicopters (PMA-261), said Tuesday during the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space expo in National Harbor, Maryland, that while it depends on the eventual contract with Israel, “I believe it’ll be the 2025-26 timeframe before they actually get delivered to Israel.

“But again the schedule is in flux until we get on contract,” Perrin added. “We are actively working with Israel on defining that and getting us all to an agreeable place.”

The helicopters will replace some of Israel’s fleet of CH-53D Yasur aircraft, some of which are up to 50 years old. The contract covers 12 CH-53Ks with an option for six more.

Bill Falk, manager of the CH-53K helicopter program at Sikorsky, said he was “very excited” that Israel had selected the CH-53K.

Asked whether the country could buy more, Perrin said the buy was limited to 18, but Israel can always request more.

“If they would like more, we’d have to go back and talk to Congress about allowing them to purchase more,” Perrin said.

Some lawmakers have bristled at the sale of arms to Israel after the country’s bombardment of Gaza and settlements in the West Bank. Multiple Democrats tried unsuccessfully to block an arms sale to Israel back in May that included Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), which may have been used in strikes on targets in Gaza in May that resulted in the deaths of around 200 Palestinians over the course of a week, according to reports.

Israel’s fleet of CH-53Ds are used for long-range heavy assault and insertion of special operations teams, among other missions.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The Navy has wrapped up initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E) for the Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS) and expects the platform to be ready for fielding by the end of this summer, according to an official.

Capt. Godfrey Weekes, program manager for Littoral Combat Ship mission modules (PMS-420), said Tuesday at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space expo in National Harbor, Maryland, that initial operational capability (IOC) for the platform is the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, which ends Sept. 30, 2021.

The UISS platform is designed for the LCS’s mine countermeasures mission package (MCM). It “consists of a mine countermeasures unmanned surface vehicle (USV) and a towed minesweeping payload for influence sweeping of magnetic, acoustic and magnetic/acoustic combination mine types,” according to a Navy statement.

The UISS’s Minehunt USV is currently in contractor verification testing. Low-rate initial production of that platform should begin sometime in late fiscal 2022, Weekes said.

The MCM mission package itself is scheduled to achieve IOC in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022.

IBM is leveraging hybrid cloud computing and AI — what it calls augmented intelligence — to create new technology systems, such as its Mayflower unmanned surface vehicle, capable of making its own decisions while far from port.

Ray Spicer, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral who is now vice president of defense and intelligence at IBM, says “hybrid cloud and AI is where the company is really focused these days, very heavily.”

Rather than concentrating data into one large cloud, IBM is able to work with various types of clouds, whether they are personal or public, small or massive.

“Having all those clouds being able to uplink together is the way to go,” Spicer said.

A hybrid cloud scenario allows the company to “containerize” apps that can pluck the data they need from a cloud where it resides, which “allows you to move the workloads to the data” rather than the other way around.

An example is the computing system Watson, which famously won on “Jeopardy!” in 2011. It has only gotten smarter since then and has been broken into component segments aimed at different markets, from financial operations to customer service to health care.

This sort of flexibility contributed to Mayflower, which leveraged technology from other industries. For example, software aimed at enabling rapid fraud detection can also be used to help Mayflower make rapid decisions on the high seas.

This sort of AI is helpful for things like collision regulations, or colregs, the rules of the sea, Spicer said. Sailors forget them from time to time and have to be retrained, but “you teach AI one time, and it doesn’t forget.”

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — In the three years that Navy Lt. j.g. Sarena Padilla and Eric Padilla have been married, they’ve lived in four different states. Sarena has changed her career from a nuclear officer to a meteorology and oceanography research officer, which necessitated the moves. But now that she’s ensconced at the U.S. National Ice Center in Suitland, Maryland, the couple is looking to settle down. And that means a more permanent job for Eric.

Eric, who has a physics and engineering background, took advantage of Sea-Air-Space’s inaugural Transition Connection hiring event on Tuesday. Military members, spouses and civilians had the opportunity to interact with more than a dozen companies, and were also able to upload their resumes and virtually chat with potential employers through the Transition Connection page on the Sea-Air-Space website.

“I’ve had contract jobs during our marriage, but it’s been hard to find opportunities to further my career,” said Eric, who’s interested in space-oriented work. “It’s been great to be able to talk to potential employers about my career intentions.”

Employers said there has been plenty of interest in their companies. Gianna Lamanna of  Manassas, Virginia-based Hepburn and Sons said her company, which does advisory work for the maritime industry, received about 150 resumes through the Transition Connection portal prior to the hiring event. She and her Bill Lewis colleague conducted back-to-back job interviews throughout the day.

“We really appreciate the opportunity to meet with so many people,” Lamanna said. “To have a [show like Sea-Air-Space] with a connected hiring event is unique.”

Lamanna estimated that about 75% of the people who sent her resumes are either planning or thinking about transitioning out of the military to civilian life.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Collin Fox is one of those potential transitioners. Fox, who has served for 17 years, most recently in the Navy Foreign Area, comes from a military family. Both his father and grandfather served, and Fox is certainly open to continuing his career after he hits the 20-year mark. But Transition Connection gave him opportunity to evaluate civilian career options as well.

“I do a lot of writing, so I’m interested in jobs that involve analysis and concept development,” he said.

At the Amazon booth, one of the recruiters had firsthand experience in moving from military to civilian life. Madeleine Caballero served in the Army for two and a half years before retiring for medical reasons.

“I understand how hard the transition can be,” she said. “I had someone tell me today how anxious they are.”

Amazon is committed to hiring 100,000 military veterans and spouses by 2024, Caballero said. The company currently employs more than 43,000 veterans and spouses in areas such as operations, human resources, safety, onsite medical facilities and Amazon Web Services.

Not all of the job seekers at Transition Connection were military, however. Faisal Munshi, who works in marine engineering, moved to the United States from India four months ago. He found the Transition Connection event on LinkedIn and decided to attend with his wife, Afroz Indorewla, a health information management student at Northern Virginia Community College.

“This is the first job fair I’ve been to since I moved to the U.S.,” Munshi said. “I’ve found many opportunities in my industry.”

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — With a third and final Explosive Event of a Full Ship Shock Trial (FSST) to go, and after an analysis and repairs if needed, the U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), will be ready for operational tasking by 2022, according to a Program Executive Office – Carriers official.

Upon completion of the last Explosive Event later this summer, Ford will enter a planned incremental availability for six months of modernization, maintenance and repairs prior to its operational use.

The Ford, the first of a new super carrier class, currently cannot accommodate the Navy’s carrier-based F-35C Lightning II joint strike fighter without upgrades. The Navy plans to complete the upgrades for the F-35C before the carrier is scheduled to operate with the aircraft.

Last year, the Navy announced F-35C modifications to the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79), the second Ford-class carrier, under a contract employing a single-phase acquisition strategy, instead of the originally planned two-phase strategy.

The Navy previously planned to build CVN 79 in two phases, putting the ship’s combat systems in “at the last minute to avoid obsolescence,” said Kevin Cormier, deputy program manager, PEO Aircraft Carriers told an exposition floor briefing at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Expo in National Harbor, Maryland, Aug. 3. 

After considering the combat systems’ delivery schedule, however, “the Navy made a decision that it was more prudent” to deliver a whole ship in 2024, Cormier said. “Right now, we are on track for 2024 delivery with the new Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR) and new Joint Strike Fighter models.”

Cormier said the next Ford-class carrier, CVN 80, is about 10% complete with keel laying expected in February 2022. CVN 80, slated to be the future USS Enterprise, is part of a two-ship one buy Cormier said saved taxpayers $4 billion. The next Ford carrier, CVN 81, is “tracking for a 2032 delivery,” he said.