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Today at 9:46 PM
Mar 20, 2019
now
Program Manager Says Industrial Base Can Handle Third Virginia-Class Sub
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Virginia class subs are suffering delivery delays of up to seven months, potentially placing the Columbia -- slated to be the backbone of the nation’s nuclear triad -- at risk.
The Navy’s two most critical submarine programs share one big concern: the ability of an already squeezed defense industry to keep up.

“One of the biggest risks to Columbia is if Virginia gets out of its cadence,”James Geurts, the Navy’s acquisition chief, told reporters here Tuesday. The Virginia boats are already suffering delivery delays of up to seven months getting out of maintenance, potentially placing the Columbia — slated to be the backbone of the nation’s nuclear triad — at risk.

Both the new Columbia-class hulls and long-planned upgrades to existing Virginia-class subs not only share a single industrial base, but interwoven schedules that require each to hit their marks on time, meaning any slip-ups will reverberate across the entire undersea force.

Asked if the Navy would sacrifice work on the Virginia to keep the Columbia on schedule, Geurts said, “Columbia is our No. 1 priority.”

Beginning in the early 2020s, the Navy is scheduled to work on both classes at the same time, producing one Columbia and two Virginia per year. That makes getting the Virginia right a core national security issue.

“The biggest issue in the submarine enterprise is not the Columbia class per se,” Geurts said. “It’s largely tracking to the schedule we have. Obviously we’ve worked through some supplier issues and we’re holding to the schedule on those… It’s really looking broadly at the whole submarine enterprise and ensuring, as we build in the Columbia, we are in a position to succeed with Virginia and Virginia Payload Module.”

To do that, “we’ve got to make sure we’ve got all the sequencing right, which includes all of the facilities, workforce, and supplier bandwidth so that as we sequence in the Columbia we can continue with the Virginia.”

That’s no simple task.

The Navy is struggling with getting its submarines and surface ships out of port on time due to difficulties in getting needed parts, and having the skilled workforce available to handle the work.

And not all shipyards are created equal.

Geurts admitted that “we have not seen the performance out of the private yards that we had hoped,” but “we’re going to be working with them to improve their performance as we look at the overall sub maintenance.”

Getting these issues straight is critical not only for the Columbia, but for the recent 10-ship Block V Virginia boats, nine of which will receive the 84-foot Virginia Payload Module. The module will give the new Virginia’s triple the Tomahawk cruise missile capacity of existing boats.

Geurts isn’t the only one who is anxious.

“One of our great concerns is the vendor base,” Capt. Christopher Hanson, Virginia submarine program manager, said here Tuesday. Hanson said that the best way to stabilize that base is to make predictable, long-term plans “well in advance, and getting those dollars out there to send a very clear signal as to what is coming.”

The Navy is attempting to do that in the Block V Virginia, and placing the
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s earlier this year.

The Columbia-class is the first completely new submarine the United States has produced in decades. Their construction schedule, which begins in 2021, has no room for error since the Columbia will replace the maxed-out Ohio-class nuclear submarines, which are slated to begin retiring in the next decade.

Asked what might slow down the program, Columbia program manager Capt. John Rucker answered simply, “the supplier base.”

The Navy’s long gap between the last new submarine build and the Columbia comes after “we as a government, we as a country — you included, taxpayer — made a decision to go down to low rate production,” he said. “Now we’re ramping back up to where we were in the 1990s. But the qualified, fully-capable high-production workforce, they’re not there today.”

He said the Navy’s usual shipyard partners are ramping up hiring, and the state governments of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Virginia have established training programs for skilled workers.

Geurts said that those shipyards are “in pretty good shape with the submarines in there now. But what we need to do is continue with work with the shipyards and continue with the optimization program as the submarine number comes back up [to ensure] we’ve got everything in place to handle that demand as it grows as we head towards 66 submarines,” in the coming decades.

“Right now, he added, “we’re using private yards to help with some surge support. The sub inventory dips down a little bit” in the coming years, but “we’ll use that dip down time to really rejuvenate the public yards.”
it's
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Feb 20, 2019
Jan 26, 2019
... the current Secretary of the Army from saying

"You can imagine a scenario where the
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feels it cannot get into the South China Sea because of Chinese naval vessels, [but] we can from a fixed location,"
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his vision of the 21st century naval warfare is ... surreal
now inside
Marines Want to Field a Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile ‘As Fast As Possible’
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:

Asked why the Marines feel such an urgency to acquire a long-range anti-ship missile, Neller said that “the urgency is just the situation security-wise we find ourselves in the world. So there’s a lot of geographical chokepoints, and you know what they are, and the potential adversaries know what they are. So if you get there first and you can control that space, then you have an operational advantage. So we’re going to test, there’s a couple capabilities out there and we’re going to test them – working with the Navy, because this is the same type of stuff you’d want to put on a ship.”
and
US Marine Corps picks NSM for anti-ship missile capability
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The US Marine Corps has selected the Norwegian Naval Strike Missile for a program that will allow the service to defend against enemy warships from the shore.

According to a Raytheon announcement from May 7, the Kongsberg-developed Naval Strike Missile will be integrated US Marine Corps’ existing force structure under a $47.59 million contract.

Another missiles reported to have been considered for the program, which was dubbed Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NEMSIS), included Lockheed Martin’s Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile and Boeing’s Harpoon.

The complete system foresees the launching of anti-ship missiles from ground-based vehicles. The system is expected to be tested by 2020.

This is the second success for the NSM in the US after Raytheon and Kongsberg were contracted to manufacture and deliver
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for littoral combat ships and future frigates.

“The Marine Corps’ selection of the Navy’s anti-ship missile enhances joint interoperability and reduces costs and logistical burdens,” Raytheon said.

“This fifth-generation missile adds another dimension for sea control operations and for protection from adversary warships,” said Kim Ernzen, vice president of Raytheon Air Warfare Systems.
so should the US Navy now get some ... tanks maybe
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
Air Force to give Sierra Nevada Corp. a sole-source contract for light-attack planes, but Textron will also get an award
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force on Wednesday stated its intent to
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from Sierra Nevada Corp. and Embraer. But a similar solicitation for Textron’s AT-6 Wolverine
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, an Air Force spokeswoman confirmed
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According to the pre-solicitation, the light-attack aircraft “will provide an affordable, non-developmental aircraft intended to operate globally in the types of Irregular Warfare environments that have characterized combat operations over the past 25 years. Additionally, it will support Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) with the ability to accomplish its mission of Close Combat Air support to partner nations.”
No they have not chosen a final aircraft.
Then again this is a niche market. Of limited value for the US.
These will likely be used by the USAF for training of foreign allied states and limited operations by SOCOM elements in Asymmetric warfare.
 
...
100b-range projects are cool to watch
... indeed:
Navy: USS Columbia Will Have Most Complete Design Ever at Official Construction Start
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The Navy will have the most complete design ever and will be well into construction when the “official start” of construction on the lead Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine occurs on Oct. 1, 2020, the service’s program manager said.

Capt. Jon Rucker said this week that his Columbia class of SSBNs is on a tight schedule – not just to deliver the lead ship in time for an October 2031 first patrol, but to deliver each subsequent ship on time for their own patrols too, as the Ohio-class boomers retire in rapid succession. But his program is managing the risks associated with the tight timeline as best as it can, including bumping up quite a bit of work before the construction phase officially begins.

While October 2020 is the official start of construction, Newport News Shipbuilding will kick off its advance construction efforts on June 7, he said, and prime contractor General Dynamics’ Electric Boat is already doing prototyping and advance construction work. Whereas lead ship USS Virginia (SSN-774) was only 1 percent complete when its construction officially began, USS Columbia (SSBN-826) will be 11 percent complete, Rucker said while speaking at the Navy League’s annual Sea Air Space conference.

“We are trying to get ahead of that curve to de-risk this program so we can achieve that schedule,” he said, noting that the Columbia-class boomers would be the largest submarines ever built in the United States.

The approximately 420 ship specifications and requirements are completed, he said, and the 4,100 design arrangements are about 97.5 percent complete. The Navy is already 44 percent through finalizing the 4.650 design disclosures and is on track to be 84 percent done with the disclosures at the start of construction. In comparison, USS Ohio (SSGN-726) was just 2 percent through disclosures when its construction began; USS Seawolf (SSN-575) was 4 percent complete, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) was 27 percent complete and Virginia was 43 percent complete.

Rucker called this drive to be largely done with the design disclosures – which outline not just the design but the measurements, details about the material, how to build the component and more – an effort to save time and money and to reduce risk, since it will avoid changes later on that will cost time and money.

Rucker also announced that, in support of the propeller and propulsor, which take four to five years to build, “the first component of the lead ship Columbia was poured on May 1. So 175,000 pounds – I won’t tell you what it is, I’m not allowed to – 175,000 pounds, first component for Columbia, on schedule.”

The captain made clear there is still risk in this program, which Navy leadership regularly acknowledges is the service’s top priority and will continue to get all the funding it needs, but still remains risky due to the tight schedule it’s on. Chief of Naval Operations
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that “we are on schedule, but just on schedule. We are on cost, but just on cost.”

Rucker said in his speech that “there are risks – however, they are risks that we understand and we’re proactively managing.”

Perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, the Navy is reducing some schedule risk by adding concurrency to the program – crunching the amount of time between the design process and the construction process in certain areas of the submarine where the design is simpler and needs less time for review before construction begins.

Rucker told USNI News during his presentation that the Navy likes to have 52 weeks between design and construction. However, “there are cases where we made a conscious decision to reduce that down to about 30 to 40 weeks. So we reduced it, but in those areas we are micromanaging it every day as we go through, and so we feel that risk is perfectly manageable. Most of the stuff isn’t the complex stuff – it would be like the structural stuff, it’s the basic building a deck, building a foundation, building a tank.”

Pulling some of this construction ahead despite what on paper looks like more concurrency risk is what will allow the program to reach 11-percent completion before construction officially starts.

“That concurrency is not what you would think that, a person’s designing it and they’re building it in parallel,” Rucker made clear.

In other areas, though, the concurrency issue may prove to be more challenging for the Navy to manage. A Government Accountability Office report recently noted that “A manufacturing defect that affected the system’s first production-representative propulsion motor required extensive repair that consumed nine months of schedule margin at the land-based test facility. The Navy now plans to test the motor at the same time it had originally scheduled to make any final design changes before starting production. This could constrain opportunities to implement timely, corrective actions if problems are discovered during testing.”

Richardson said in his recent testimony to lawmakers that he and Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer “have made it very clear that, looking forward and anticipating those things that will inevitably arise during testing and everything in such a complex program, we need to work diligently to build more margin into the program.”
 
they already have them they are called the Marines
didn't you get Yesterday at 9:27 AM
I referred to
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The United States Armed Forces
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are the
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of the
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. It consists of the
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,
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,
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,
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, and
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.
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?!
OK you didn't so I'll explain to you my
Yesterday at 9:27 AM
post
Feb 20, 2019
and
US Marine Corps picks NSM for anti-ship missile capability
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so should the US Navy now get some ... tanks maybe
it starts with Jan 26, 2019
... the current Secretary of the Army from saying

"You can imagine a scenario where the
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feels it cannot get into the South China Sea because of Chinese naval vessels, [but] we can from a fixed location,"
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his vision of the 21st century naval warfare is ... surreal
United States Army
statement about a proposed supergun for
United States Army
to supposedly help the USN (and I think such Army activity is dubious);

the post goes on with Feb 20, 2019
Jan 26, 2019
now inside
Marines Want to Field a Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile ‘As Fast As Possible’
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:

Asked why the Marines feel such an urgency to acquire a long-range anti-ship missile, Neller said that “the urgency is just the situation security-wise we find ourselves in the world. So there’s a lot of geographical chokepoints, and you know what they are, and the potential adversaries know what they are. So if you get there first and you can control that space, then you have an operational advantage. So we’re going to test, there’s a couple capabilities out there and we’re going to test them – working with the Navy, because this is the same type of stuff you’d want to put on a ship.”
United States Marine Corps
statement about an intended acquisition of OTH AShMs by
United States Marine Corps
to supposedly help the USN (and I think such USMC activity is dubious);

the post Yesterday at 9:27 AM then links
US Marine Corps picks NSM for anti-ship missile capability
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showing more of activity that is dubious according to me, and this post concludes
so should the US Navy now get some ... tanks maybe

which I thought was an obvious reference to
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but you then said
#11084 TerraN_EmpirE, Today at 3:04 AM
"they already have them they are called the Marines"
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
didn't you get
No I get it but this is a shift back to the Pacific theater. Island based operations.
The Army a few weeks back demo' d firing a Howitzer off a landing craft.
And is looking for a fun that could land shells over a thousand miles.

The Marines are worried that they could end up stranded after an island landing needing a way to defend themselves from a counter landing operations so they want antiship missiles to disable enemy landing ships.

But normally the rivalry is vs services that overlap. That's what you don't get.
Since the Navy is Siamese twins with the Marines the Navy has tanks.
Normally the rival for the Navy is the Airforce with the Army and Marines at each other.
So your facetious comment should have been the Airforce buying landing ships or submarines.
 

bd popeye

The Last Jedi
VIP Professional
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BRUSSELS (AP) — The Latest on the crisis surrounding Iran's decision to step away from the embattled nuclear deal with world powers (all times local):
2:20 p.m.

The head of Egypt's port authority says the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has passed through the Suez Canal on its way to the Persian Gulf amid an escalation with Iran.

The state MENA news agency quoted Mohab Mameesh, the Suez Canal authority chief, as saying he observed the passage of the carrier through the canal on Thursday morning.

MENA says the director also met the U.S. defense attache in Cairo, Gen. Ralph Groover, who had travelled to the Suez Canal area to check on the status of the U.S. warship.

The White House on Sunday dispatched the aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Persian Gulf. On Wednesday, Rouhani threatened Iran could start to enrich its uranium stockpile closer to weapons-grade levels in two months.
 
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