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Engineering innovation by technical sailors on board the Leeuwin-class hydrographic survey ship HMAS Melville has resulted in an increase in the maximum propulsion power available to support the ship’s involvement in task group operations, while improving the normal operating conditions for essential machinery.
The propulsion motor room (PMR) in hydrographic ships houses the ship’s main motors and gearboxes.
This equipment generates heat through its normal operation and the maximum propulsion output of the ship has previously been defined when operating in tropical climates by how effectively this heat can be dissipated.
Under the leadership and technical guidance of Petty Officer Marine Technician Ryan Schweitzer, the technical department in Melville recently investigated if the PMR could be cooled more effectively to allow the ship to operate its drive train at higher speeds.
A broad cross-section of the ship’s technical department was involved in thermographic mapping, airflow analysis and ambient air monitoring in order to prototype enhanced ventilation systems.
After testing and refinement of the enhanced ventilation system, analysis showed the enhanced design reduced the localised build-up of hot air around sensors and drive equipment.
This allowed the ship to achieve greater performance from its drive train, allowing Melville to travel at higher average speeds while giving the added benefit of reducing the load on the propulsion train when operating at lower speeds.
Commanding Officer HMAS Melville, Commander Michael Kumpis, applauded the marine technicians’ hard work.
“This is another great example of Next Generation Navy at work with our MT sailors challenging themselves to come up with innovative solutions to fix problems and take action,” Commander Kumpis said.
“Through those efforts, we have immediately enjoyed a positive impact on operations while ensuring our plant and equipment is effectively sustained for the long term.”
The improved ventilation allowed Melville to increase its maximum speed when conducting operations as part of Task Group 637.3.4 with HMA Ships Adelaide and Larrakia, providing a direct benefit to enhanced regional engagement activities with the local communities in Nuku’alofa, Tonga.
Engineering Officer Lieutenant Commander Jonathon Robarts said it was great to see the marine technicians in Melville were able to conduct a deep level technical investigation and produce tangible improvements using the ship’s organic capability.
“This is what a return on investment looks like when you invest in your people,” Lieutenant Commander Robarts said.
After receiving a technical report on the investigation drafted by Petty Officer Schweitzer, the Hydrographic System Program Office (HSPO provided cost-effective recommendations to fully implement a permanent solution.
Further trials have been conducted with ship staff, HSPO and British Aerospace engineering representatives working together to achieve significant efficiency improvements and reinforcing our sailors’ reputation as respected technical experts working in partnership with industry.
Petty Officer Schweitzer is planning to pursue a Bachelor of Engineering to become a marine engineering officer.
Marines assigned to 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) conduct a live fire exercise aboard amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA 6).
America, flagship of the America Expeditionary Strike Group, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit team, is operating in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations to enhance interoperability with allies and partners and serve as a ready response force to defend peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.
With the developing relationship between sensors and shooters in the maritime kill web, what is the evolving role of the fighter?
I had a chance to talk about these changes with the CO of TOPGUN, CDR Tim Myers.
We started by discussing how he would compare and contrast his experience during his previous tour at TOPGUN, in 2006 through 2009, to his current tenure as CO.
In terms of continuity, he underscored that TOPGUN has always been staffed by innovative warfighters, whose experience in the fleet has meant that the organization’s work on innovation of operational tactics has had a significant influence throughout the Navy writ large.
A key difference between his time during his earlier tour and now is that NAWDC has become much more engaged than its predecessor organization in working on warfighting requirements.
From his perspective, incorporating experience from warfighters on the tactical cutting edge is key to ensuring the Navy is developing capabilities that will fold into future operations.
Another key difference is the increasing importance of integrated operations across the entire joint force, and, of course, within the Navy.
He noted that TOPGUN has a close working relationship with the U.S. Marine Corps, with five USMC blue instructors currently on the TOPGUN staff. The interoperability with the USAF is significant as well, with naval aviation billets at the 422nd Fighter Squadron in Nellis and the 6th Fighter Squadron JSF Weapons School. These billets are both filled by former TOPGUN instructors, ensuring close alignment between USAF and Navy tactics.
CDR Myers underscored the key synergies being worked among MAWTS-1, Nellis and NAWDC as well. He noted that with all three services flying the same combat fighter (in three variants of the Joint Strike Fighter with 80% commonality), they are improving their understanding of how to work jointly in the new strategic environment.
And the joint cooperation leads to enhanced cross learning.
For example, he noted that USAF experience in IADS, rollback, over land, and offensive counter-air is something that naval aviators are leveraging, whereas the USAF is leveraging the Navy’s expertise in maritime strike operations.
We then discussed the USAF-led WEST-PAC exercise held this past January, which highlighted the evolution of USAF thinking. The exercise had the stated purpose of distributing airpower throughout the operational area and working integratability to shape the desired combat effect, but it also demonstrated a USAF focus on working maritime strike with joint partners.
Clearly, the F-35 has now arrived with full force at TOPGUN, who graduated their first Joint Strike Fighter Class in April, bringing an increased focus on fourth and fifth generation combined tactics, which has allowed them to maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of both the F/A-18E/F and F-35.
For example, NAWDC has been able to leverage fifth generation sensor fusion and target identification capabilities, contributions to kill web management, and enhanced survivability inside of certain weapons engagement zones while also taking advantage of the unconstrained form factors, greater weapons payload capabilities and flexibility that come with a mature and evolved fourth generation platform.
TOPGUN, as a component of NAWDC, is uniquely positioned to tackle integration both within a Carrier Strike Group as well ensure integratability within the joint force. NAWDC hosts the type weapons schools for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and F-35 Lightening II (TOPGUN), E/A-18G Growler (HAVOC), E-2C/D Hawkeye (CAEWWS), MH-60R/S Sea Hawk (SEAWOLF), and Maritime Intelligence, Resonance, and Surveillance (MISR) staff officers, all under one roof.
The organization is also responsible for the integrated training and certification of every Carrier Air Wing prior to deployment. Bringing the sweep of virtually every key element of an aviation kill web together on the NAWDC range complex, they can examine this evolving synergistic fighter capability and rapidly work through how integratability is optimized with other elements of the sensor and strike force.
By generating a fused picture, distributed strike can be delivered throughout a kill web concept of operations.
In my discussions with the head of the Navy’s Maritime Patrol Enterprise, Rear Admiral Garvin, he underscored that the Navy was not going through iterative, but rather a more dramatic, step change. CDR Myers concurred.
For CDR Myers what the kill web was highlighting was a strategic opportunity: “How do you use information to distribute the coordination of fires to a point where you can accomplish fires more rapidly?”
“Instead of fusing all of this information into a central hub and then distributing that information from some coordinated command level, the focus becomes finding ways to autonomously push all the most relevant information so that the warfighting assets at the tactical edge, with a comprehensive understanding of commander’s intent, can take mission command to the point of execution.”
The answer to the question posed at the outset of this article: Fighters comprise a force package at the tip of the spear for the kill web, combining advanced sensor packages with inherent survivability with the battle space awareness necessary to bring effective fires to bear.
With the introduction of the F-35 as a multi-domain flying combat system, and in some ways with the evolving integration of the fighter force into a synergistic sensor-shooter lead element via fourth and fifth generation as a key enabler of the kill web itself, naval aviation demonstrates a promising way to leverage the strengths of its diverse platforms to shape the battlespace.
Editor’s Note: With regard to iterative versus step change, here is how Rear Admiral Garvin put it in his interview:
Question: In other words, the new approach allows for a differentiated but integrated approach to system development across the force seen as interactive platforms?
Rear Admiral Garvin: I think of it this way, rather than taking an evolutionary or iterative approach, what this allows for is a step change approach.
“We’re thinking beyond just the iterative.”
This discussion with Rear Admiral Garvin drives home a key point for me that the MPA dyad operates in a way that is not simply a U.S. Navy capability for a narrowly confined ASW mission sets.
The USAF is clearly concerned with the maritime threat to their air bases and needs to ensure that a joint capability is available to degrade that threat as rapidly as possible to ensure that the USAF has as robust an airpower capability as possible.
Certainly, the B-21 is being built in a way that would optimize its air-maritime role. And clearly a core bomber capability is to get to an area of interest rapidly and to deliver a customized strike package.
Hence, for me the new MPA approach is a key part of the evolving USAF approach to future capabilities as well.
The color of the uniform perhaps belies how joint a kill web approach to platforms really is.
Featured Photo: F-35C Lightning IIs, attached to the Grim Reapers of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 101, and an F/A-18E/F Super Hornets attached to the Naval Aviation Warfighter Development Center (NAWDC) fly over Naval Air Station Fallon (NASF). VFA 101, based out of Eglin Air Force Base, is conducting an F-35C cross-country visit to NASF.
The purpose is to begin integration of F-35C with the Fallon Range Training Complex and work with NAWDC to refine tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) of F-35C as it integrates into the carrier air wing. (U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Cmdr. Darin Russell/Released)
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, as well as their components and regions, are conducting their core missions. (U.S. Air Force Video by Tech. Sgt. Thomas Grimes).
Australia’s first digital shipbuilding course began a month ago, changing traditional shipbuilding education in this country.
The Diploma of Digital Technology is educating participants about digital technologies, connecting workers and information systems to ensure they learn and master the digital technology skills to work on the Government’s $35 billion Hunter-class frigate program.
The course is being run in partnership between ASC Shipbuilding – the prime contractor for the program – and Flinders University.
The world’s most advanced digital shipyards are being built in South Australia and the diploma will help foster a world-class Australian workforce which can leverage digital information and intelligence systems to facilitate greater innovation.
With the winding down of the Hobart-class Air Warfare Destroyer Program, the diploma is ensuring that shipbuilding capability is retained.
One of the 53 participants enrolled, Tony, said he could not have envisaged studying a new diploma 12 months ago.
“These first few weeks we have been adapting to new systems, new software and new environments,” Tony said.
“It has been exciting to dive into something new, yet familiar, looking for ways to apply new ideas against old processes and outcomes.
“Everybody has been making progress in directions previously not considered. I commend BAE Systems, ASC Shipbuilding and Flinders University for creating this diploma, allowing many of us to transition to the new shipyard, bringing further innovation along for the ride.”
With the challenges posed by COVID-19, students will be able to complete coursework online and, when permitted, will attend classes at Flinders University.
The Commonwealth has announced it will acquire six more Cape class patrol boats from Austal for the RAN as it seeks to support Australian industry during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis.
The six vessels will be built at Austal’s Henderson yard in Western Australia, and will add to the two Cape class vessels the RAN currently leases from Australian Border Force and eight Armidale class patrol boats. They will be joined in service by 10 larger Arafura class offshore patrol vessels from 2023.
“These vessels will not only enhance national security, but will provide important economic stimulus and employment continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Defence Minister Senator Linda Reynolds said in a May 1 statement. “The ability to build more of these vessels in Australia will deliver Australian Industry Content of more than 65 per cent, providing significant opportunities for Australian industry and Defence, as well as more than 1,200 workers in the broader Australian supply chain.”
Minister for Defence Industry Melissa Price MP added, “This will help to ensure continued employment opportunities for 400 of Austal’s commercial shipbuilders in WA, with flow down benefits to Austal’s supply chain. Austal is an Australian industry success story with the company already building variants of the Cape Class Patrol Boat for international customers including the government of Trinidad and Tobago, …(and the) Guardian Class patrol boats in support of the…Pacific Patrol Boat program.”
The Armidale class has suffered in recent years with poor availability and greater maintenance requirements, reportedly due to overuse in the border security mission. While no timeframe for the Cape class to enter service was announced, its likely some of the Armidales will be decommissioned early as the Cape class vessels enter service.
This article was published by ADBR on May 1, 2020.
This article is published with permission of ADBR and all copyright remains with ADBR.
Featured Photo: Australian Defence Vessel Cape Fourcroy. (ADF)
We first published this article on January 8, 2012 and given the COVID-19 events, it seems prudent to republish the article, which focuses on the challenge of building resilient organizations.
The article as published in 2012 follows:
The Second Line of Defense team have been involved in crises management situations throughout their careers. And crises management is a key issue in which the team is both interested and has published several inputs.
During a trip to Europe in November 2011, SLD’s Robbin Laird sat down with Paul Theron of the Thales Group to discuss his work on the challenge of crafting resilient organizations. Theron is head of a working group within Thales, which addressed the key challenges surrounding collapse and response in crisis situations. The group has focused on the challenge, in general, and within telecommunications infrastructures in particular.
Shaping resilient organizations as societies face Black Swan events. Credit Image: Bigstock
Black Swans and Gray Swans are a regular occurrence in the 21st century. Building organizations which can deal with their dynamics are crucial. At the heart of coping and recovering is the core capability of resilience.
The briefing, which anchored the conversation, can be seen below at the conclusion of the article.
The Theron briefing provides an overview to the approach being developed at Thales. The brief provides seven findings on critical infrastructures resilience and we encourage our readers to go through the brief itself to get a sense of the core foundational work, which Theron and his team are doing with regard to this crucial challenge facing 21st century organizations and societies.
In this piece, we are going to provide an overview of some of the key dynamics of change associated with the need to provide flexible and agility capabilities to manage 21st century complexity. In other words, we are going to harvest some of the findings and points during the discussion and craft a narrative regarding the challenge of crafting a resilient organization.
The brief is based on several real world events from which some core propositions about resiliency were developed. Among these events are the impact and response to Katrina, the challenge of trauma faced by Paris firemen, and the Mann Gulch incident in Montana in August 1949.
At the heart of the challenge is recognizing that 21st century societies and organizations have an inherent complexity within which system or sub-system collapse can be expected. The need is to prepare for the unexpected because that is the expected.
A Theron noted: “we live in such complex world, that we cannot forecast what’s going to happen next.”
Crises are largely started by incidents but as an incident unfolds there are multiple dynamics in which simply responding to the initial incident will not be sufficient. Indeed, by focusing simply on a single incident and following the procedures for “normal” response to a single incident will lead to system or sub-system failure.
Theron underscored that “events which started in relatively limited way start impacting the whole world because the phenomenon propagates to other spheres which themselves are going to affect other spheres and from one sphere to the next, the phenomenon amplifies, becomes bigger, but in a way that you can hardly predict because in fact you’re going to have so many interactions between those spheres that the way each interaction will work is completely unpredictable.”
This means that as collapse is generated by events, the response team and its leaders needs to not only multi-task but also look for a core thread around which recovery can be built. To do so will require not simply mobilizing internal resources but seeking outside resources as well.
A key element is to NOT focus on the proximate cause of the collapse but to weave together a more comprehensive response and narrative which would allow recovery.
Theron cautioned that you can’t plan for everything for every single disaster and the more so as you move up to the stage where phenomenon are going to combine with each other into something completely new and so you have to have that capability to create solutions to react dynamically to whatever emerges in the time of crisis.
And that’s, that’s a big change that most companies think they are going to resolve all issues. But that way of thinking is wrong because we are not talking about a basic flood or a basic fire that ruins your computer department, we are talking about something that is going to be complex, which is going to mix, maybe a fire ruining your computer department combined with the financial crisis plus the arrest of your manager because he committed financial fraud and so on. And these incidents create an event of such a magnitude and complexity that your business continuity plans are useless. You have to re-think, re-position, and re-focus in shaping a recovery strategy.
Collapse is about system recovery and re-direction. The two elements are highly correlated. Indeed, Theron emphasized that crisis is an experience of collapse. To navigate through a collapse is the attribute of resilience. Resilience is the aptitude of a socio-technical system to surmount a crisis.
Resilience is demonstrated by several behavioral elements: getting by, resisting, resuming and rebounding from a crisis.A number of key elements can be highlighted about the nature of the challenge of dealing with crises and ways to shape resilient organizations.
Crises are an inherent part of interdependent and complex 21st century societies.
Crises are multifunctional and interactive.
If you prepare for single incident crises, you are putting yourself in harm’s way
Complex crisis management requires robust and resilient solutions.
Resilience is based on tactical and strategic agility.
Leadership and response teams can operate beyond the near term focal point.
Leveraging outside resources towards a clear end is crucial in situations of collapse and recovery.
Agility requires bundling internal and external resources to create a growth after a disaster outcome.
Resilience for organizations and societies is agile robustness.
According to Theron: Resilience is the aptitude to face a crisis and to surmount a crisis. To do that you need four aptitudes, three of which are drawn upon in the dynamics of dealing with collapse.
The first is the capability to get by. You have a core mission, e.g., it is to rescue people in buildings and fire if you are a fireman, if you are a telecommunication provider it’s to deliver a communication service, if you are an army in the battlefield, it is to fight according to the plans set for you and you are not supposed to give up your mission just because you are facing even death.
The second is resisting the destructive pressure of the circumstances. That means that you don’t allow yourself to be drawn down to the point you’re going to die.
Three, you have to find ways to resume your normal activity.
And four, you have to rebound. That means that once the crisis is over, when you are finally in the past crisis stage, you have to think about what happened, to draw the lessons from what happened.
You have to look at how at the world around you, maybe it has changed to a point significant enough to imply that you should adapt to that new world around you and get rid the old structures, the old plans, and the old ways of life.
And that’s rebounding. And if the first three help you through the collapse stage, the fourth one is going to make you more robust, but probably more resilient because you will have learned that in certain extreme situations, what matters is the way you manage to navigate through the circumstances at hand.
Resilience is generated in part by tactical and strategic agility. The ability to re-combine elements and to introduce new ones in shaping a post collapse system is central. As Theron put it: You have to have that capability to break boundaries, to go beyond your boundaries and think completely differently.
We ended the conversation with Theron emphasizing the centrality of understanding where your organization fit within its matrix of interdependencies.
And he highlighted the need to spend time understanding those interdependencies PRIOR to crises in order to understand how to shape an agile response once a crisis hit.
For example, telecommunication depends on energy, electricity, but any electricity depends on telecommunication and electricity serves also gas and water distribution and so and water helps the telecommunication sector because you have to cool down big computer centers and so on.
So if you really want to assure the resiliency of a sector like telecommunications, and only focus narrowly on your facility, you will miss the point. Because you are in that network of interdependencies and you can’t achieve resilience on your own.
Your sector is analogous to a social group, which depends on the social groups around it. And therefore that means that you have to can have resiliency not only at your own level, but at a higher level, at a coordinated, collaborative level that is going to help you discuss the problems and prepare upstream for possible unknown devastating events.
And if you don’t have this collaboration upstream, in times of crisis, you won’t even know who’s the guy at the electricity company whom you should know and who could solve your problem. You won’t have that possibility. You won’t have coordinated plans. You won’t have coordinated systems or alternative means to resolve situations.
The coronavirus pandemic will affect the power of countries in different ways. The biggest impact will be reductions in the economic, and therefore military, strength and relative power of competing major states.
The American historian Walter Russell Mead says that ‘the balance of world power could change significantly as some nations recover with relative speed, while others face longer and deeper social and political crises’.
Henry Kissinger’s view is that ‘the world will never be the same after the coronavirus’. He stresses the need for the democracies to defend and sustain the liberal world order. A retreat from ‘balancing power with legitimacy’ will cause the social contract to disintegrate both domestically and internationally. The challenge for world leaders is to manage this crisis while building the future, he says, and ‘failure to do so could set the world on fire’.
Most importantly, the pandemic has widened the confrontation between the US and China, with uncertain results for Australia.
China stands to be a loser, not because its economic power won’t bounce back, but because its ideology forced this pandemic on the rest of the world when it could have been contained at the very outset. By suppressing information about the outbreak in Wuhan, the authorities lost the world at least four to six vital weeks when Beijing could have contained what is now an unprecedented global disaster.
China had been warned about the origins of the 2003 SARS epidemic, which, like the coronavirus, started in a major Chinese city. In both instances, the virus appears to have been transmitted to humans from wild animals sold in China’s wet markets. The leaders from President Xi Jinping down will carry the legacy of their denial and repression as a millstone that will be long remembered outside China as causing large numbers of unnecessary deaths worldwide.
In one fell blow, China has fatally undermined the advantages of globalisation—not only in a health sense, but also in Western countries’ dependence on China for medical drugs and equipment. Countries such as the US will diversify away from such reliance on China, even if that increases costs.
America’s reputation has also been damaged, by its inability to provide leadership in arguably the worst crisis since the end of the World War II. Allan Gyngell, a former head of Australia’s Office of National Assessments, has said that the US ‘looks irrevocably weakened as a global leader’. While China is now belatedly ‘offering its resources and experience in handling the virus to build relationships with other countries’, including in Europe, he notes that the US is ‘absent from any international leadership’.
President Donald Trump has failed to provide consistent and credible responses as the crisis has unfolded.
Rather than prompting a multilateral response, the Covid-19 crisis has ramped up extreme nationalism and harsh border-protection measures as the virus spread rapidly from one country to another. Nations are becoming acutely introverted as they give absolute priority to staving off massive deaths and the threat of calamitous economic damage, and even collapse for some.
In the longer term, this pandemic will likely fade away and most, but not all, advanced economies will snap back into economic growth. But it will be the most damaging crisis by far that our populations have experienced. The remarkably sudden and abrupt onset of this calamity will lead to greater uncertainty, and even fear, about our futures.
Australia will find itself weaker in the post-pandemic world. Serious economic damage may well have a long-term impact on cohesion and trust in our society. The reputation of our American ally has been badly damaged. And it remains to be seen whether we should allow our trade with China to resume its previous predominance.
A major lesson we should learn is to diversify our economic relationships and become more self-reliant, including in terms of our national security. This will involve a radical rethinking of the credible circumstances in which we will have to take the lead during security crises in our region without American involvement.
We will need to re-examine our vulnerabilities in such key areas as fuel supplies, critical infrastructure, and protective and offensive cyber resources. We should rapidly develop a new strategic posture, giving high priority to long-range missile attack capabilities to deter any power from threatening our strategic space.
A further serious geopolitical issue should not be underrated. It’s highly likely that neighbouring countries, critically important to us strategically, will suffer severe structural damage to their societies and economies. The health systems of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu may be overwhelmed, with very high death rates.
They will need our help to fight this virus and to restructure their economies. Australia and New Zealand should lead the way. If we don’t, China will probably step in and offer massive economic and medical assistance as it seeks to entrench a sphere of influence in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, which will directly threaten our own security.
The future of the democracies in Australia’s primary area of strategic interest to our north and east must deeply concern Australian policy planners. We should ensure that our natural focus on our own serious problems doesn’t lead us into the trap of isolationism.
Indonesia, with over 270 million people, and Papua New Guinea, with nearly 8 million, must be priorities. If the coronavirus overwhelms their potentially fragile societies, we should be prepared to contribute generously to a prolonged and expensive effort to rebuild their health systems and economies. It’s not in Australia’s interests to see such strategically crucial neighbours collapse.
Australia’s former ambassador to Indonesia John McCarthy believes that the Covid-19 crisis could fuel support for extremist groups in Indonesia and place the nation’s stability at risk. We need to think carefully about the geopolitical impact of the virus on countries in our immediate region and give it our highest priority.
The nation-state has decisively reasserted itself as a prime actor in the global fight against Covid-19. There will be much greater calls for self-reliance, but as the international community becomes more fractious and the liberal order recedes, we must not lurch into a new bout of introversion.
Paul Dibb is emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University.
