Category: Defense

Source: United States Navy

The Navy’s newest berthing barge, Auxiliary Personnel Lighter (APL) 69, recently conducted Builder’s and Acceptance Trials in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Builder’s Trials consist of a series of in-port tests and demonstrations that allow the shipbuilder, VT Halter Marine, and the Navy to assess the craft’s systems to ensure installation in accordance with the original equipment manufacturer’s guidelines and that the craft design and configuration meet the contract requirements. 

Acceptance Trials consist of integrated testing to demonstrate the capability of the platform and installed systems across all mission areas to effectively meet its requirements. These tests and demonstrations are witnessed by the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) and are used to validate the quality of construction and compliance with specifications prior to delivery to the Navy. “These vessels improve quality of life for our Sailors during ship maintenance availabilities and inter-deployment training cycles,” said Capt. Eric Felder, Program Manager, U.S. Navy and Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Boats and Craft, Program Executive Office (PEO) Ships. “We look forward to delivering more of these vessels to the Fleet to provide the necessary berthing, messing, administrative, and leisure facilities to crews while their ships are undergoing maintenance.”

APLs are 82 meter long barges that can berth up to 609 people – 72 officers and 537 enlisted personnel. Mess seating is available for 224 enlisted personnel, 28 Chief Petty Officers (CPOs) and 28 officers in 20-minute intervals, allowing food service for 1,176 personnel with three meals a day. 

APLs are used to house duty crews while ships are in maintenance availabilities, and can be towed to new bases or shipyards to support changing fleet requirements. Additionally, they offer the potential use for humanitarian missions and other temporary assignments. APLs are equipped with offices, classrooms, washrooms, laundry facilities, a medical treatment facility, a barber shop and a fitness center.

VT Halter Marine is currently in production of two additional APLs.

As one of the Defense Department’s largest acquisition organizations, PEO Ships is responsible for executing the development and procurement of all destroyers, amphibious ships, sealift ships, support ships, boats, and craft.

Source: United States Navy

The AV-8B Weapon Systems Program Office (PMA-257) recently recognized Fleet Readiness Center East (FRCE) for its outstanding support of the AV-8B Propulsion Integrated Product Team and the AV-8B Harrier fleet.

Col. Mark R. Amspacher, PMA-257 program manager, visited FRCE Mar. 31 and presented staff with letters of appreciation citing the depot’s direct contribution to the readiness of the Marine Corps’ AV-8B fleet and support in meeting its war fighting missions.

FRCE Commanding Officer Capt. James Belmont said he was pleased to see the team’s hard work and out-of-the-box thinking acknowledged by leaders in the AV-8B community. 

“I could not be more proud of the team here at FRCE,” Belmont said. “Seeing a program office recognize our people in this way just reinforces to me that we employ some of the most innovative, highly skilled experts in the world, who have real-world impact on flight line readiness for the Harrier fleet and beyond. They will stop at nothing to ensure our warfighters receive the support they need.”

According to Christopher Day, FRCE’s Engines and Dynamic Components Branch lead, FRCE began identifying potential supply constraints with the AV-8B’s fuel management units (FMUs) as early as 2019, and proactively began searching for solutions.

 “The AV-8B Harrier is in its sunset years,” Day said. “The F-35 will replace the Harrier at some point, but we still need to maintain AV-8B capability. Harriers are still going out and serving the country across the globe. It was vital that we continue fuel control production for these Harriers and their F402 engine.”

The AV-8B is a vertical and/or short take-off and landing (V/STOL) strike aircraft powered by the F402 turbofan engine. Combining tactical mobility, responsiveness and basing flexibility, both afloat and ashore, V/STOL aircraft are particularly well suited to the special combat and expeditionary requirements of the Marine Corps.

The FMU is an essential part of the AV-8B’s F402 engine. Day compares it to the carburetor in a car, albeit a very large and complex one. It delivers fuel to the Harrier’s engine and the aircraft cannot fly without it.

“Without a fuel control you don’t have an F402 engine,” said Day. “And without an engine you lose the close air support capability that the Harrier provides. This was a ‘couldn’t fail’ type of effort. Everything that we could put on the table, we put on the table.”

To overcome potential issues with obtaining new FMU materials through traditional supply sources, a cross-disciplinary team consisting of members from the program office and FRCE artisans, engineers and planners was formed to look at creative ways to ensure production of this vital part of the Harrier power plant would not be impacted. One option – salvaging out-of-service fuel controllers that could be dismantled to provide piece parts for use in newly overhauled, ready-for-issue FMUs – showed promise. Rigorous examination and testing confirmed this approach was a viable option.

“We decided that it might be possible to minimize throwing out some of the old parts,” Day said. “We had them inspected and the team worked with engineering to add processing steps to prolong the life of some of these critical parts, and we were able to do that.

“It took an exhaustive effort on engineering’s part to get these to the lab and analyze the data to make a safe-for-flight determination,” he continued. “We also used the RILOP program, or reclamation in lieu of procurement. We basically brought in older-style FMUs and tore them down for usable parts.”

In addition to putting together and testing new FMUs, FRCE artisans now found themselves tearing down older FMUs and obtaining usable parts. According to David Lawrence, FRCE’s Fuel Control Shop supervisor, his team was more than up to the task.

“The guys who build FMUs in my shop – I can’t say enough good things about them,” said Lawrence. “One of my artisans who builds them has an incredible level of experience, and was able to train two more people and certify them to build FMUs. In our testing area, another artisan, who is a long-time aviation maintenance professional, had trained a secondary operator and is currently training a third operator to test FMUs. During this whole process, there was never a time when folks weren’t on board. Everybody was doing everything they could to get FMUs out the door and where they need to be.”

Despite the hard work involved, Lawrence says the FRCE team focused on the importance of their task, with each team member aware of the vital nature of their work.

“It’s all about supporting the warfighter,” says Lawrence. “At the end of the day, you tell the artisans where the finish line is and they’re going to cross it. The people in this shop have a high level of integrity. The end result is they give that pilot something he or she knows they can get the job done with.”

The innovative thinking and diligent work of the FRCE team have paid off and provide Harrier pilots with a capable and quality aircraft to complete their mission. The depot’s efforts ensure that FMU production continues without a hitch and continues to support Fleet requirements.

“That was absolutely epic for those guys to have someone like Colonel Amspacher come in and present our team with their letters of appreciation,” said Day. “I thought that was outstanding. I’m proud of not just this team, but all the teams we have here in the Engines Branch. They’re always up for a challenge and always looking for ways to keep those engines running and aircraft flying.”

According to Day, the depot’s support of the FMU for the AV-8B is a good example of just how important the work of the FRCE artisans and engineers can be.

“These FMUs are going on a single engine aircraft,” said Day. “The readiness of each of these aircraft is vital to our country. Things happen in the world that we need to be ready for. Right now, the Harrier is still that aircraft that needs to be ready to go. It is our job, along with the Marines, to ensure that the AV-8B can go, will go, and will be on-site at any time.”

FRCE is North Carolina’s largest maintenance, repair, overhaul and technical services provider, with more than 4,000 civilian, military and contract workers. Its annual revenue exceeds $1 billion. The depot provides service to the fleet while functioning as an integral part of the greater U.S. Navy; Naval Air Systems Command; and Commander, Fleet Readiness Centers.

Learn more at www.navair.navy.mil/frce or https://www.facebook.com/FleetReadinessCenterEast.

Source: United States Navy

ADMIRAL MICHAEL M. GILDAY:  Sally and Tony, thanks for hosting tonight, and for bringing together a group of technologists, aspiring technologists, and military officers to get to know each other a little bit better and to talk about some of the challenges that we’re facing. On behalf of senior military leaders here tonight, thank you.  Thanks for having us.­­

And I wanted to – I was thinking about, you know, when we first joined years ago.  The paradigm then with respect to research and development in this country was that most of it was either done by the government or subsidized heavily by the U.S. government.  And now that paradigm doesn’t – (inaudible).  And what that’s meant for us is that it’s meant opportunity for us to really leverage some of the innovation and great ideas that you have.  In a – in a military system which things are typically driven by requirements, what we see these days is you’re opening our eyes to solutions to problems that we haven’t even considered yet.

And so I’d just like to briefly talk about three vignettes, things that have happened over the past year.  Some of you have been directly involved in this work, others I’m sure are going to help us in the future solve some of these problems.

But in one case, we recently held the largest unmanned exercise in the world in the Middle East.  And we had about a hundred different unmanned platforms, we had 10 different countries participating, and dozens of companies – many of them small startups – that came together.  And the problem to solve was how to provide maritime domain awareness or how to provide sensing across the Red Sea for our regional partners in that area, who maybe have on a – on a regular basis five or six ships today in a battlespace that’s about the size of the state of California.  So a parallel would be think about patrolling the state of California with five or six police cars.

And so the solution set, obviously, is unmanned, but it’s tied together – if I could just divert for a second and talk about Tesla as the digital native, and the – and their company in the automobile industry is the one to catch.  And how there are many different companies that, obviously, have a ton of different platforms – Volkswagen, Ford, et cetera – that they can – that they want to operate autonomously, but the real magic sauce, obviously, is the AI software integration, right, they can plug into any one of those platforms.

And so with this exercise, bringing together dozens of companies with hundreds of platforms, along with AI developers – they were from different companies.  And we bring them together to create solution sets on how we can not only better sense the environment, but also make sense of the environment and push that data back to regional operations centers where they’re much better off than they were a few months ago in terms of understanding illegal fishing or the illicit transfer of weapons and people.  So one example.

Another would be the network required to connect all of that stuff together, not only now but in the future when unmanned systems are going to proliferate.  And how do we connect manned and unmanned systems together in a way where we can move data – any data over any system in a software-defined, resilient architecture that allows us, at speed, to use that data in way to have decision superiority over an opponent?  So it’s leveraging networks that we have now.  It’s leveraging them in a way we never had.  It’s packaging data in a way that we’re leveraging the best ideas out there from companies like yours.  And it’s making a real difference for us and I think will make a real difference for us in the future.

And the last example I’d give you is on some of the live virtual constructive training that we’re doing, where we’re actually leveraging the gaming community, principally out of Orlando, Florida.  And they’re helping us take hundreds of ships and aircraft, ground elements, whether they’re special operators or whether they’re Marine elements ashore in Camp Lejeune or whether they’re Army tanks, and tying them all together in a virtual environment.

To give you an example, in a recent exercise taking the geography off of Norway and superimposing that off the coastlines of Virginia and North Carolina.  And then you have ships and aircraft that are actually – and submarines – that are operating in that battlespace, but you’re virtually tying in ships that are tied to a pier, or Marines that are ashore, or Army operators that are ashore.  Or, instructively, you’re taking ships that are in the Indian Ocean and you’re transporting them into that battlespace.  And so you can operate as a fleet, as a joint force at a scale that we never had before.

And so there’s no way that we could afford to get all of that stuff underway in the air, on the sea, under the sea at any given time.  And so to leverage the technology that you’re bringing to bear, and to do this in a very powerful way that’s changing how we think about – how we think about deterring and fighting in the future, has been enormously helpful.  So, as we serve the first course here, I just want to say thanks for what you’re doing and what you continue to do.

And just a real quick shameless plug for our entry – our entry points into how we’re trying to make this easier for your companies and others to plug into us.  And so for the Air Force, it’s AFWERX.  For the Navy and the Marine Corps, it’s Naval X.  And for the Army, I believe, it would be Army Futures Command.  So those are the tech bridges that allow you to more easily connect with our operators, and do quick-turn stuff in a dev ops environment that, again, makes a difference.  So, Sally, Tony, thanks again.

Source: United States Navy

SBIOI gatherings, which are sponsored by the Charleston Defense Contractors Association (CDCA), foster small business interest in working with a government lab and offer an understanding of the rapid acquisitions tools available.

The Charleston-based events also help NIWC Atlantic engineers and technologists excel in information warfare, connecting them personally with emerging innovators in the commercial space.

“We are so grateful to the CDCA and our industry partners here for enabling this environment of collaboration,” Peter C. Reddy, NIWC Atlantic executive director, told a packed room of nearly 375 business leaders.

Under the Small Business Act, the Department of Defense has statutory targets regulating how many acquisition dollars are obligated to small business. NIWC Atlantic’s Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP) seeks to award 39% of all eligible obligated dollars on prime contracts to small business concerns, according to Robin Rourk, OSBP deputy director at NIWC Atlantic.

More than halfway through the fiscal year, NIWC Atlantic has already awarded 46% of all eligible dollars to small business.

“These outreach events are critical to continuing to increase our small business numbers and diversity,” Rourk said. “Small business innovation brings speed and agility to the information war.”

Unique at this year’s first SBIOI was the attendance of Marine Corps Systems Command (MARCORSYSCOM) Director of Contracts Johany Deal and her team of contracting officers, who travelled from Quantico, Virginia, to brief business leaders.

“There exists a very dynamic relationship between MARCORSYSCOM and NIWC Atlantic,” Reddy noted. “With business technology developers here in the audience today, we look to leverage these teaming connections even more as we rapidly deliver capabilities that meet the needs of the warfighter today and tomorrow.”

As the Marine Corps continues solidifying its doctrine of recognizing “information” as the seventh warfighting function, Reddy said it’s no secret the information domain will be where future battles are fought and decided.

Leaders from the Expeditionary Warfare Department at NIWC Atlantic held the longest panel discussions of the day focused on the services they provide MARCORSYSCOM, the Marine Corps organization responsible for overseeing every technology and piece of gear placed into the hands of Marines.

Ashlee Landreth, who leads the Expeditionary Warfare Department, spent time providing the audience a high-level understanding of the latest national defense strategies that affect her workforce and the capabilities they are developing and fielding.

“Our nation’s success in the Indo-Pacific region will depend on the ability of our naval and special operations forces to sense and make sense across systems while operating in a contested maritime environment,” Landreth said. “As the lead systems integrator for many of those enabling systems and capabilities, we are in a unique position to work with industry to achieve our technical interoperability goals and meet key objectives of national strategy.”

Throughout the day, military leaders discussed technical growth areas at NIWC Atlantic, industry forecasts and upcoming opportunities to partner with the Navy.

In addition, Steve Harnig, NIWC Atlantic’s director of contracting, delved into various metrics related to contracts and explained the command’s mission in achieving data-driven results.

“Every time we engage with industry, the goal is to not only share our priorities and what business opportunities are available but also demonstrate the overall transparency of our operations,” Harnig said. “I view our industrial base as stakeholders in the information warfare business, and I try to build trust during events like SBIOI so that we can foster excellent working relationships.”

Following the event, CDCA President Gary Jaffe said the continued strength of the defense industry’s relationship with NIWC Atlantic was highlighted, made especially noteworthy with the Marine Corps contracting professionals in attendance this year.

“This milestone for the CDCA, coupled with the amazing growth we’ve experienced, underscores the importance of our mission as we seek to protect, strengthen, advocate for, and grow industry’s ability to deliver valuable solutions to our warfighters,” Jaffe said.

Two more SBIOI events are scheduled to take place this year on July 13 and Oct. 20.

About NIWC Atlantic

As a part of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, NIWC Atlantic provides systems engineering and acquisition to deliver information warfare capabilities to the naval, joint and national warfighter through the acquisition, development, integration, production, test, deployment, and sustainment of interoperable command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, cyber and information technology capabilities.

Source: United States Navy

The symposium, designed by Capt. Pete Maculan, the CECOS commanding officer, provided mentorship to naval civil engineer corps (CEC) officers and increased their knowledge about strategic communication and engineering licensure. 
 
“This was an opportunity for senior architects to address issues within the civil engineer officer community,” stated Maculan. “This inaugural event was a great success.  We met all of our objectives and I’m looking forward to next year’s event.” 
 
A portion of the symposium was dedicated to the professional development of junior CEC officers. Junior architects were able to ask senior CEC community members questions about career progression and how they could better help the architect community at their level. On day two of the event,  breakout teams were utilized to help personalize mentoring and share local practices.

The three day symposium was held both in-person and virtually. With the help of the newly created CECOS broadcast team, the event included attendees from around the world, as far away as Djibouti, Africa.

“It was a production that connected our presenters from all over the globe, allowing the exchange of personal real world experiences. This new technology between live streaming and future broadcasting in our newly designed studio is not only a faster vehicle to get information out, but also cost saving for the Navy.” stated Mr. Patrick Shelby, CECOS audiovisual production specialist.

CECOS, located at Naval Base Ventura County, Port Hueneme, California, provides Seabees, civil engineer corps officers, facility engineers and environmental professionals with the necessary skills, knowledge and education to enhance lifelong learning and to provide quality support to the fleet.

For more info about CECOS, visit www.netc.navy.mil/CECOS/ or follow CECOS on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CivilEngineerCorpsOfficersSchool/