Thoughts of the Day

Had a hour long roundtable discussion with Bob Work on Wednesday as part of the press greeting, a lot of interesting things came out including a look ahead on Flight III and Flight IV of the DDG-51s. If you reporters in DC can do the rest of us a favor, apply all the pressure possible on folks for a copy of the AMDR report - us peon readers would appreciate it a great deal (this report is supposedly outstanding).

Basically, the radar will be a 14' aperture array SPY-3 system. Bob discussed the budget quite a bit, and in my very brief glance I think one thing is clear - the Navy did great in this years budget. A recognition of the advantages of naval power is evident in the Obama administration, even during very difficult economic times.

Work outlined a possible vision ahead for the JHSV. Flight I would be civmar crewed, with a Flight II version potentially being milcrewed for Riverine and SEALs. As he explained it, the thought that popped into my head was "Department of Everything Else" but I didn't write down why this thought came to me - and forgot exactly what he said that had this thought jump in my head.

For Bob Work, $15B shipbuilding budget is the invisible line on shipbuilding. Above $15B the Navy should be global in construct, below $15B it should be regional in construct. In other words, it is either/or for him despite recognition that regional fleets are less expensive. It makes sense, although I think you can do both and having a handful of regional fleet task forces (4 is the number I believe works) is useful to enhancing the value of the global fleet structure. While it is more complex, a regional fleet would be smaller vessels that are forward based while a global fleet is a larger vessel fleet that deploys too and from CONUS in this context.

Work said the Navy "is going to compete everything" and performance matters. Performance matters was something he said repeatedly.

The LCS program will be 4 crews for 3 ships, a slight change, and the Navy wants to use the ships very hard early to test a lot of ideas. They expect the ships to be in use 50% of the time to increase the opportunity to develop concepts, technologies, and learn lessons. He made it clear the LCS program is going to be one of build some, use them for testing, and evolve from lessons learned. I note the decade beginning 2010 is a great period to do exactly that, because there are lots of technologies to test, develop, and integrate. The Navy is seeking advice and guidance from the civmar community on how to use the LCS at sea for greater periods of time - a detail I thought was very interesting.

Bandwidth is the bane of everything Bob Work said, and he said the word bandwidth zero times. I am still skeptical whether his battle force "network" is going to have enough bandwidth at current investment rates to meet the vision in his mind, or every vision explained by Navy leaders here that begins with the "networked technology solution." Bandwidth is a word used heavily in West 2010, but only by very informed folks as the crippling factor in all these big ideas of their superiors. Obviously this is a known problem discussed privately at the deck plate and assumed a bit too much for my taste at the leadership level - at least in public.

FY16 begins Flight III Burkes. Will R&D be funded heavily to support all the mods? He said yes but wow this is going to be a huge topic. Flight III will include a few mods, but the big one being the radar. There is expectations that a Flight IV would follow later with technologies from DDG-1000.

The new Burkes over the 5-year plan will include generators and cooling, so there are some mods to the Flight IIAs which raises the question if they are really Flight IIBs?

More in detail later.

I have a summary of Day 2 at West at USNI Blog, and Midrats last night was very good. Bill Miller at USNI broke some news - members will in the near future be able to access every Proceedings article written over the last 135 years online in the current online format, and he had quite a few other interesting things to say. The whole episode is good, including the interview with Phil Ewing of Navy Times and the last 15 minutes on piracy following the panel discussion at West 2010 today. I think Midrats is an hour worth your time, and I appreciate all feedback.

Is This Thing On?

For the last two Sundays Phibian, Eagle1, and I have been doing a one hour blog talk radio show called Midrats. Episode One looked back into 2009 and forward into 2010, while Episode Two included our first guest US Naval Academy professor Claude Berube.

Yes, this is still a work in progress and we are aware of some of the 'hits' and 'misses' to date in our programming, but feel free to be as supportive or critical as you desire anyway. I have so little experience in productions like this I can use the feedback as I swim through the swamp (funny comments appreciated the most).

Next week Bryan McGrath will participate in Episode Three representing Information Dissemination as we continue on this journey. This is still something very new, and in the case of last night, was literally me talking on my cell phone in my car during a coffee break completely unaware of the additional events taking place like the associated show web chat and other features.

But it shall continue to improve in time, and we hope to very soon be the most interesting hour of maritime audio you can find every week.