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The NATO Sea Sparrow Consortium is decades old and still going very strong. The highly maneuverable RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) has been protecting allied surface combatants and their escorts for nearly 15 years now around the globe and is seen as a huge success. Before that, the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow, itself an adaptation of the AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missile, had served since the mid 1970s, protecting everything from American supercarriers to allied frigates from airborne threats and short to medium-ranges. Now the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile Block II is on the way, with its first test firings having occurred last Summer and the Navy just recently released video from these milestone events.

The ESSM Block II's first two test launches occurred aboard the Navy's test ship, the modified Spruance class destroyer

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, last June off the coast of Southern California. Both tests appear to have been successful.

The ESSM Block II has much in common with its progenitor, including its ability to be quad-packed into a single Mk41 vertical launch system cell. It can also make use of "legacy" launchers like the Mk29 box launcher that still adorns American supercarriers, amphibious flattops, and other allied vessels. The Block II uses the Block I's rocket motor and thrust vectoring hot section, but its seeker is much more capable.

Instead of relying on semi-active radar guidance, where one of the ship's radar illuminators has to "paint" the target for the missile to guide toward and eventually detonate nearby, ESSM Block II features both active and semi-active radar seekers. This dual-mode seeker setup combined with a datalink allows the missile to be fired at targets without ever having the ship illuminate the target at all. The missile gets mid-course updates from the ship via a datalink for longer distance engagements, or it can be launched "fire and forget" for shorter engagements. Fire and forget mode can be used for longer-range shots too, with the missile flying out to its best guess of where the target will be on its own inertial guidance system before turning on its active radar seeker, but the chances of a successful intercept will decrease the farther the missile flies without the benefit of mid-course updates.

This dual mode setup solves a huge problem for the ESSM Block I, as ships have limited capacity to defend themselves due to a finite number of illuminators available to guide each individual missile through their separate terminal attacks. Even though ESSMs could be rippled off quickly at many targets, there simply isn't enough illuminator guidance capacity to support them, even when illuminator time is tightly managed.

This is no longer an issue with ESSM Block II, giving ships much greater capacity to defend themselves against a multi-missile swarm attack, and especially ones emanating from different vectors with missiles flying disparate attack profiles. Additionally, the Block II can still leverage the older style of guidance, using the ship's illuminators to paint the target, which may be advantageous in some instances, and by using both seekers the probability of a kill would likely increase.

Also, in a networked battlespace, ESSM Block II can intercept sea skimming anti-ship missiles at greater distances, even when shipborne illuminators, or even radars of any type, are unable to detect or paint the low-flying targets. The ESSM Block II can leverage third party sensor tracks (from another ship, aircraft etc) under the

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and fly out towards its target at altitude, and then dive down on it from above, using its own active X-band radar seeker to lock up the target and destroy it. This will be especially useful when opening up the missile's secondary surface attack functions in littoral environments.

All told, RIM-162 ESSM Block II offers a lot of extra capability without having to redevelop the entire missile. And for the US Navy in particular, which fields large amounts of these missiles on its destroyers, cruisers, amphibious flattops, and aircraft carriers, this capability is badly needed. Not just that, but it's also a real value. The ESSM program is funded cooperatively between the US and allied nations that are part of the consortium. The split is roughly 40% United States and 60% foreign partners. So the US Navy gets an updated ESSM with critical new capabilities for 40% of the cost of developing it alone.

Considering the increasing threat of anti-ship missiles that is proliferating among

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and

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, ESSM Block II presents an essential capability that couldn't come soon enough.

The missile is slated to go operational in 2020.

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Navy Considering Mid-Block Virginia-Class Upgrades, SSGN Construction in Late 2030s

The Navy has developed a Tactical Submarine Evolution Plan that looks at rapidly inserting capability upgrades into the Virginia-class attack submarine mid-contract and considers long-term undersea warfare priorities such as converting the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) production line into a guided-missile submarine (SSGN) line in the late 2030s.

The Navy’s Undersea Warfare Directorate (OPNAV N97) started the plan under previous director Vice Adm. Bill Merz, who now serves as the deputy chief of naval operations for warfare systems (OPNAV N9), and has been continued under current acting director Brian Howes.
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The Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program (SSBN-826) is coming down in cost and staying on schedule despite an early challenge, program officials said last week.

After moving into engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) at the beginning of 2017 and beginning early construction prototyping activities, the SSBN program is proving it can leverage all the tools at its disposal to take cost and schedule out of the Navy’s top acquisition priority.

The program was giving a $8-billion affordability cap, and when the Milestone B decision was made in January to move into EMD, the program was sitting at about $7.3 billion for the average procurement unit cost (APUC) across all 12 planned submarines, Program Executive Officer for Submarines Rear Adm. Michael Jabaley said at the Naval Submarine League’s annual conference.

“Through innovative legislative authority and contracting techniques, we’ve already reduced cost by $80 million per hull, to bring APUC down to $7.21 (billion),” Jabaley said.
“So that was a combination of missile tube continuous production … and advance construction, which is pulling key construction activities to the left. Really the focus of that was to reduce the risk of not delivering on time, but it had an added benefit of savings as well.”

Congress gave the program several new authorities to help with the Columbia class. Lawmakers allowed for continuous production of the missile tubes – a shared venture with the British Navy – so that manufacturing rates can stay level rather than the ups and downs that would come along with buying them in ship sets based on U.S. and U.K. sub acquisition timelines. Lawmakers also created a

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and created opportunities for the Navy to save on common components shared between the Columbia program, the Virginia-class attack submarine and the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier.

Jabaley said the Navy still hopes for a few additional authorities, including continuous production for components beyond the missile tubes – but leveraging the existing authorities plus potentially adding a few more creates a situation where “we have the ability to get the APUC below $7 billion. That is a stretch goal, but again, as I said, when you understand that the cost of this program is significant, then we really need to do everything we can to buy margin back into the program both in terms of cost and schedule.”

Jabaley would not elaborate on what other authorities he wanted from Congress, but he told USNI News that “what you always have to balance is the opportunity cost, because nothing comes for free – all of those efforts require investment in the near-term. You have to put money in to pull activities to the left, to smooth the workload at the shipbuilders and the vendors, and you get it back in savings beyond the [five-year Future Years Defense Program], but from a budgetary standpoint that’s money you have to invest and you can’t buy something else, whether it’s another ship, another squadron of airplanes, whatever. So those trades are made all the time, first in the Navy. The work that we do with Congress is to ensure they understand what our intention is, and then if necessary provide the legislative authority to do it.”

Jabaley said early work is taking place now at General Dynamics Electric Boat to prototype the “quad pack” construction method that will be used to build these large submarines.

“This process is critical to the ability to build the ship in seven years, 84 months,” he said.
“It is fundamentally different from how we did it on [the Ohio-class SSBNs], and by starting it now, prototyping it early, working all the bugs out, it’ll provide significant benefit down the road.”

“We’re on a very aggressive design and construction schedule with no margin; we can’t shift the schedule any further right,” Naval Reactors Director Adm. James Caldwell said at the conference, adding that testing should span until early 2019, when procurement is set to begin.

Caldwell said the program is still on track

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– not one intended for use on a submarine, but the pre-production model meant to support testing.

“We have faced a challenge in the manufacturing of the pre-production full-sized motor that we’re going to use for testing. It was not a technology challenge; it was a manufacturing challenge. We addressed the cause on that and modified (the schedule) – we built the schedule, by the way, to have a good amount of margin in it, meaning months that we could use if we had a challenge that we found,” he told USNI News during a question and answer session.
“We’ve re-torqued that schedule, we’ve approached the scheduling in an alternate way, and we still are on track to deliver the final motor well before the required in-yard date for the shipyard. So the testing … will start on the components that we have available in December of this year and will continue through next year. So there is a delay – and again, that’s the pre-production motor. That’s the motor we’re going to use to learn from, full-sized, just like we would pretend to build if we’re building the ship; we’re going to do a design turn, and then we’re going to build a final production motor, and that will be the one that will also be tested in our test facility.”

Caldwell told USNI News after his speech that Naval Reactors is responsible for the life-of-ship fuel and the electric drive, both of which are still on track to deliver ahead of need at the shipyards. He said the Navy and Congress are supporting the program with adequate funding but added that the submarine community needs to keep being vocal about what it needs to keep the Columbia program on track.

“It’s a complex project, it’s a very big submarine – it’s two and a half times the size of a Virginia-class submarine, and we’re going to build it in the same timeframe as the first Virginia class that we built – so the challenge is big,” he said.

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The Marine Corps has issued a Request for Information (RFI) on existing coastal-defense anti-ship missiles from the defense industry in order to address a shortcoming in “meeting the demands of a future operating environment.”

The request, posted on the FedBizOps website, notes that “The Marine Corps is currently not organized, trained, and equipped to meet the demands of a future operating environment characterized by complex terrain, technology proliferation, information warfare, the need to shield and exploit signatures, and an increasingly non-permissive maritime domain.”

The request also notes that “The 21st century Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) operates and fights at sea, from the sea, and ashore as an integrated part of the Naval force and the larger Combined/Joint force.”

The Marine Operating Concept outlines a role for the MAGTF in sea control, stating that “Marine forces can also support sea control through anti-surface warfare missions and counter-fast attack craft/fast inshore attack craft missions...”

The RFI said that “the Marine Corps is interested in readily available shore-based, coastal-defense capabilities designed to provide precision kinetic fires against ships at ranges of 80 miles or greater.”

The Marine Corps is interested in systems that would be “employable by highly deployable and mobile forces” and “able to be integrated with U.S. and partner nation weapons, command and control systems and surveillance systems.”

The Corps envisions that such a system would include a launch system, a command and control center, and “a surveillance and over-the-horizon target acquisition capability.”

The United States has made little investment in coastal-defense artillery or missiles in decades, most recently in coastal defense artillery during World War II and in some anti-aircraft missiles during the Cold War.

Nations such as China, North Korea and Iran have made significant investment in coastal-defense cruise missiles. One such missile launched by Hezbollah forces severely damaged an Israeli Navy corvette in July 2006 and have been fired from Yemen in October 2016 against U.S. Navy ships in the Bab-el-Mandeb strait.

The RFI listed Nov. 30 as its deadline for submissions from industry.

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Raytheon Co., Tucson, Arizona, is being awarded $260,345,336 for modification P00010 to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price (N00019-17-C-0034) for procurement of 196 Tomahawk Block IV all-up-round vertical launch system missiles and spares in support of the Navy. In addition, this modification provides for the procurement of spare parts and support for the government of the United Kingdom. Work will be performed in Tucson, Arizona (23.95 percent); Walled Lake, Michigan (12.41 percent); Camden, Arkansas (10.76 percent); Gainesville, Virginia (7.5 percent); El Segundo, California (6.5 percent); Glenrothes, Scotland (4.4 percent); Fort Wayne, Indiana (3.7 percent); Clearwater, Florida (3.4 percent); Middletown, Connecticut (3.1 percent); Spanish Fork, Utah (2.46 percent); Ontario, California (2.4 percent); Midland, Ontario, Canada (2.21 percent); Vergennes, Vermont (1.96); Dublin, Georgia (1.9 percent); Berryville, Arkansas (1.7 percent); Westminster, Colorado (1.14 percent); Simsbury, Connecticut (0.73 percent); Moorpark, California (0.71 percent); Valencia, California (0.69 percent); Hollister, California (0.69 percent); Mesa, California (0.6 percent); East Camden, Arkansas (0.55 percent); South El Monte, California (0.51 percent), and various locations inside the continental U.S. (6.03 percent). Work is expected to be completed in August 2019. Fiscal 2017 and 2018 weapons procurement (Navy); and foreign military sales funds in the amount of $260,345,336 are being obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract combines purchases for the Navy ($256,702,665; 98.6 percent); and the government of the United Kingdom ($3,642,671; 1.4 percent) under the Foreign Military Sales program. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity.

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The final ground-based interceptor for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system — designed to protect the homeland from intercontinental ballistic missiles threats from North Korea and Iran — is now in place at Fort Greely, Alaska, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency has confirmed.

“MDA and Boeing emplaced the 44th interceptor in its silo at the Missile Defense Complex at Ft. Greely on Thursday, Nov. 2,” the agency said in a statement sent to Defense News.

The agency planned to have all 44 required interceptors in the ground and ready to respond to threats by the end of 2017.

It’s been a monumental year for the GMD system as it went up against an ICBM-class target for the first time in a May test, completely obliterating the threat. Previous tests had featured intermediate-range ballistic missile targets that approached ICBM speeds.

The much-anticipated test follows a series of successes and failures. Trouble with the interceptor’s exo-atmospheric kill vehicle, designed to destroy targets in high-speed collisions after separating from a booster rocket, plagued the program.

The test and the installation of all 44 ground-based interceptors could not come at a more important time, as North Korea continues to increase its testing both in frequency and capability and the country’s rhetoric against the United States grows more bellicose.

The Pentagon and the MDA have indicated in recent months a serious move to build up beyond 44 interceptors. In September, the Pentagon proposed reprogramming $136 million in fiscal 2017 to start raising the number of ground-based interceptors from 44 to 64 in a new Missile Field 4 at Fort Greely. The boost was part of a $416 million reprogramming request targeting missile defense needs.

And the White House submitted a supplemental budget request for FY18 on Nov. 6 that asked for further funding to increase the number of ground-based interceptors by 20 and to build an additional missile field at the Alaska base.

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