Month: August 2022

Source: United States Navy

Naval Oceanography’s Indo-Pacific 3^rd & 7^th Fleet Representative, Dr. Brown visited Philippine Fleet Commander, Rear Adm. Nichols Driz at Fleet HQ’s Naval Base Heracleo Alano in Sangely Point, Cavite City, June 29.
 
Brown’s visit with Driz reaffirmed commitments made during the week prior at the 31^st HSWG, held at Bonifacio Naval Station in Taguig City, Manila.
 
“The visit was very fruitful, we discussed our navies’ future joint hydrographic survey activities and how to further streamline those processes and procedures,” said Brown.
 
The 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) prioritizes: (1) defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat; (2) deterring strategic attacks against the U.S., Allies and partners; (3) deterring aggression, while being prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary; and (4) building a resilient Joint Force and defense ecosystem­. Emphasizing strong Navy partnerships, the 31^st HSWG and Naval Oceanography’s support to the PN aligns with 2022 NDS priorities.    
 
“Additionally, we discussed PN’s modernization plan and the critical role its own Naval Meteorological and Oceanographic Center has in supporting this plan,” said Brown.
 
Brown toured PN’s Naval Meteorological and Oceanographic Center, hosted by Commanding Officer Capt. Peter Tolentino III, PN, where Brown presented Naval Oceanography’s overview brief, likewise receiving the PN Naval Meteorological and Oceanographic Center brief.
 
“It is important that we sustain partnership engagements like these to support our navies’ larger missions by using our own operational skill-set and expertise…in this case all things meteorology and oceanography,” Brown said.
 
As a result of the 31^st HSWG, Brown and Tolentino agreed to build on cooperative efforts between the U.S. Navy and PN to share information, enhance partnerships, and learn from best practices in oceanography, hydrography, and meteorology.
 
Naval Oceanography personnel from Fleet Survey Team (FST)—Lt. Nicole Dawn Mountain, Lt. Ricardo Uribe, Mr. Chandler Malley, Lt. j.g. Matthew Dullum, Aerographer’s Mate (AG) Second Class Steven Verhorn and AGAN Adrian Bentley—successfully executed a survey of the region’s own Subic Bay—in collaboration with the U.S. Underwater Construction Team and their PN counterparts.
 
Of note, FST’s survey of Subic Bay revealed three uncharted or misplaced ship wrecks, which were briefed to the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, PN and Philippine National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (NAMRIA) immediately following the survey.
 
HSWG was created under the U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Board – Security Engagement Board (MDB-SEB), established in 2006, and is executed under Naval Oceanography and NAMRIA with coordinating responsibility. Survey activities are conducted for safety of navigation, and to support naval assets participating in USN-PN exercises in the Philippine region.
 
U.S. Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command directs and oversees more than 2,500 globally-distributed military and civilian personnel who collect, process and exploit environmental information to assist Fleet and Joint Commanders in all warfare areas to make better decisions, based on assured environmental information, faster than the adversary.
 

Source: United States Navy

Friday night, at about 9:45 p.m., NAS Whidbey Island SAR received a mission to rescue a 24-year-old woman who was reported to have fallen off a cliff near Nooksack Falls in Whatcom County north of Mount Baker. The crew launched from Ault Field at approximately 10:10 p.m. and began searching for the patient as soon as they arrived at the Falls.
 
After an extensive search, the patient was found about 100 yards downstream from the Falls, on a shoulder of the river under a tree.  The SAR crew recovered the patient, who was hypothermic and had fall injuries, via hoist and transported her to St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Bellingham by 11:25 p.m.
 
Late Saturday evening a SAR crew was notified of a 27-year-old male who was suffering from heat injuries near Lena Lake on the Olympic Peninsula. At about half past midnight on Sunday morning the SAR crew launched and coordinated with the on-scene ground SAR team from Jefferson Search and Rescue, who had marked the location of the patient with white lights.
 
The patient was quickly recovered via a litter hoist and transported him to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle where they landed at about 1:40 a.m. Sunday morning.
 
NAS Whidbey Island SAR routinely trains with local, county, and federal search and rescue units throughout the Pacific Northwest. Ground search and rescue units are often critical to the efficient and safe helicopter recovery of patients.
 
NAS Whidbey Island SAR has conducted 21 missions this calendar year, which includes eight MEDEVACs, 11 rescues, and two searches.
 
The Navy SAR unit operates three MH-60S helicopters from NAS Whidbey Island as search and rescue/medical evacuation (SAR/MEDEVAC) platforms for the EA-18G aircraft as well as other squadrons and personnel assigned to the installation.  Pursuant to the National SAR Plan of the United States, the unit may also be used for civil SAR/MEDEVAC needs to the fullest extent practicable on a non-interference basis with primary military duties according to applicable national directives, plans, guidelines and agreements; specifically, the unit may launch in response to tasking by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center (based on a Washington State Memorandum of Understanding) for inland missions, and/or tasking by the United States Coast Guard for all other aeronautical and maritime regions, when other assets are unavailable.
 

Source: United States Navy

Aptly named after the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom and warfare, Athena is an innovative collaboration tool intended to accelerate NPS research into capabilities by illuminating the totality of prior and current work at NPS. Athena will increase NPS impact by creating a dynamic, real-time resource for connecting fleet and joint force needs to prior NPS work, our students, faculty and other researchers across the Naval Research and Development Establishment (NR&DE).

“Athena is based on a pretty simple idea that comes from industry best practices in research and development, which is ‘work with the people who work with your product,’” explains U.S. Marine Corps Col. Randy Pugh, NPS’ Senior Marine Representative and Deputy Director of the Naval Warfare Studies Institute (NWSI) at NPS. “In our case, the people who work with our product are naval warfighters and the folks who support them with concept and capability development. By getting all of these key players together, and providing easy access to what has and is being worked on, or could be worked on, we are setting them up to collaborate networking across traditional silos.”

The concept and subsequent development for Athena was initiated in 2019 by then NPS student Marine Corps Maj. Ryan Tice, with aspirations to help university students increase the impact of their research by creating a search engine to link experts to operators to solve operational needs. Upon Tice’s graduation, Marine Corps Capt. Benjamin Cohen took over as the lead student and served as the primary liaison between NPS and collaborators.

“One of the key features of Athena is a very robust search tool,” said Cohen, who is now director of the NavalX SoCal Tech Bridge in San Diego working for the Office of Naval Research. “Once the connections are made to allow Athena to search NPS and external research databases, users will find that they have an incredible amount of information available to them that can be leveraged to narrow, expand or redefine their own research.”

This student perspective drove the evolution of the tool into a mechanism that empowers the warrior-scholars at NPS to advance their impact by maximizing their awareness of all ongoing and past work at NPS.  Students seek direct feedback from the fleet and sponsors regarding real-world problems they can address, and Athena provides them with the ability to get the answers directly back into the hands of the warfighters.

With support from the NPS Foundation the project moved from concept to a fully functioning application that has been gifted to NPS. Hosted in Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, Athena is a discovery engine for NPS research, and will connect across a number of disparate defense research databases allowing students and other users to search topics and projects that may apply to their needs.

“We see a ton of mid-career officers, senior enlisted personnel and civilians who show up at NPS and ask the question, ‘What should I work on that would be of importance to the Navy, Marine Corps, or the Joint Force?’ And not be able to find an easy answer to that question,” noted Pugh.

“Athena is able to sweep all of these research-related things into a pile and then sort them based on what problem you are trying to solve,” he continued. “So, whether that’s based on your curriculum or on your occupational field or on your interest, now they can go in and find completed, ongoing and potential topics for future applied research, as well as other like-minded professionals to connect with.

“Another huge attribute of this program is the capability to receive input from the ‘front lines,’” added Pugh. “Some problems are driven from the top down, like building the next class of ship or the newest weapons systems, but a lot of the things that we could be working on, as far as applied research goes, come from the bottom up. Using Athena, the deckplate Sailor on a ship or a Marine in an infantry battalion can identify a problem that they have and then we could help solve it. We certainly want to include them on the input side of Athena, feeding us their very real problems so that we can work on them.”

Education in today’s technology-driven strategic competition is a growing priority. According to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday’s recently released NAVPLAN 2022, one of four priorities is to, “Invest in trained, resilient, and educated Sailors that can out-think, out-decide, and out-fight any potential adversary.”

Additionally, the NAVPLAN states, “We owe it to our people to create an ecosystem that recruits and retains diverse and technically-skilled personnel, educates them to out-think our adversaries, trains them to work with new technologies, and provides them with the resources to prevail in competition, crisis, and conflict.”

Since the emergence of Athena, NPS and Microsoft have announced a cooperative research and development agreement and are collaborating on the continued development and integration of Athena is part of the CRADA’s “Campus of the Future” initiative.

“NPS education and research delivers warfighter capability,” said retired U.S. Navy Vice Adm. David H. Lewis, current director of NWSI. “Education at NPS constitutes a strategic investment in our people, which is about gaining decision advantage for our naval forces in future conflicts. Research expands, enriches, and thus enhances our educational mission in the near term by delivering new knowledge, new understanding, and real outcomes based on that new knowledge. Athena is a powerful connector that supercharges our education and research missions in support of future warfighting advantage.”