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2017-09-14 The Williams Foundation has been a thought leader in bringing together the key players in the Australian military as well as allies to shape a way ahead for the integrated force.
Since March 2014, the Williams Foundation has conducted a series of Seminars that explored the opportunities and challenges afforded by the introduction of next generation combat capabilities.
Topics that have been explored prior to the latest seminar have included:
Air Combat Operations – 2025 and Beyond
Battlespace Awareness – The Joint Edge
Integrating Innovative Airpower (held in Copenhagen)
Training for an Integrated ADF: Live, Virtual and Constructive Design-Led Innovation
New Thinking on Air-Land
New Thinking on Air-Sea
Integrated Force Design
On August 23, 2017, the Williams Foundation held a seminar on the future of electronic warfare.
In this report, the major presentations at the Williams Foundation seminar on the evolution of electronic warfare, notably from the standpoint of shaping an integrated force, are outlined and discussed.
Additional materials provided during interviews prior to or during the seminar are included as well as relevant background and analytical materials building out key themes introduced and discussed in the seminar.
With the introduction of the Growler, this has provided a natural hook into the broader discussion of the evolving payloads, which need to be part of an integrated 21st century combat force.
The seminar background and focus was described in the run up to the seminar as follows:
An increasingly sophisticated and rapidly evolving threat with ready access to advanced, commercially available off-the-shelf technology is transforming the operational context in which the Australia Defence Force must now survive and fight.
The next generation battlespace will be contested across multiple domains with control of the Electromagnetic Spectrum becoming just as important as control of the Air if the Joint Force is to operate with the freedom of manoeuvre necessary to ensure campaign success.
This Seminar seeks to build a common understanding of how the EA-18G Growler, in particular, will impact the Australian Defence Force at the strategic, operational and tactical levels, and how Airborne Electronic Attack is likely to shape future Australian Defence and Security policy.
It will provide a historical perspective on the development of the Royal Australian Air Force’s Electronic Warfare capability dating back to World War 2, and describe how today’s Air Force personnel are raising, training and sustaining the Growler Force in partnership with the United States Navy.
We will hear the perspectives of the Australian Army, Navy, and the Joint Commanders, as well as contributions from our senior coalition partners in the United States and the United Kingdom. The emphasis will be on gaining a better understanding of the key enablers and technologies, such as C4I, Electronic Warfare Battle Management, and training systems, which turn the manned and unmanned platforms into Joint Capability delivering sophisticated battlespace effects.
The Seminar will also serve as an opportunity to provide an industry perspective on Electronic Warfare and, in particular, the role they can play as a Fundamental Input to Capability. It will highlight the importance of disruptive technologies, speed to market, and the increasing emphasis on non-kinetic effects to gain operational advantage. Industry participants are invited to address topics including Electronic Warfare Battle Management, training, and the emerging technologies associated with networked, force level effects.
Above all, the seminar will emphasise the need for a new attitude to Electronic Warfare and, in particular, a need to embrace the arrival of the EA-18G Growler as a catalyst for change. In doing so, it provides an opportunity to make Electronic Warfare more accessible and understandable to the Joint Force, and develop the Information Age Warfighters necessary to deliver campaign success on future operations.
In effect, this Electronic Warfare (EW) seminar was a case study of the tron warfare piece of building an integrated force which can operate a variety of payloads in a diversity of conflict situations.
At first blush, the Growler and its integration was the focus of attention; but in reality, the seminar was much broader than that due to the focus of attention of the speakers and the interactions with the audience throughout the day.
The heart of the seminar was provided by a fascinating and wide ranging presentation by the RAAF and US Navy Growler participants.
The presentations highlighted the very flexible and innovative working relationship between the US Navy and the RAAF in delivering Growler to Australia.
This effort provides a model of how to deliver joint combat effects by an allied force.
But both highlighted, that Growler was in many ways a means to an end.
Group Captain Braz emphasized that the RAAF did not want stovepipe EW specialists but rather the delivery of EW or what we call Tron Warfare payloads in the battlespace.
And even though the Aussies are just now getting Growler, the US Navy is just now working beyond the land wars to sort out how Growler fits into the high intensity battlespace.
And it is clear that the US Navy has much to learn from Australia, a point driven home by the US Navy representative, CDR Mike Paul, Electronic Attack ‘Wing, Pacific Fleet.
In an interview with Group Captain Graz last Spring in Amberley, he highlighted how he saw the Aussie approach.
We need to get the experience which Growler can deliver and share the knowledge.
The difficult thing with Growler is that it delivers non-kinetic effects, and sometimes they’re difficult to measure. We’re used to being able to deliver effects through other systems where the outcome is tangible and measurable.
For a Growler, if you’re attacking a threat system or the people operating that threat system, then often it’s difficult to truly assess how much you’re affecting that system.
You can do trials and tests in certain scenarios, but it’s never quite the same, and so you get a level of confidence about what immediate effect you can achieve, but it’s the secondary and tertiary effects that we’re often looking for that are sometimes harder to measure.
The difficult challenge will become knowing how degraded the network is and how reliable the information is at any given point.
If you create enough uncertainty in the operators, then you can achieve an effect even if it’s not degraded.
Lt. General (Retired) Davis, recently the Deputy Commandant of Aviation, built from the core perspective of these two Tron Warriors to emphasize that for the USMC, electronic warfare capabilities are something which the insertion force needed as a core capability, not a specialized asset to be flown in from time to time.
He highlighted the Marine Corps approach to enabling the MAGTF with integrated EW capabilities, ranging from Intrepid Tiger pods on aircraft, to the F-35B, to the payloads on Blackjack, and to the coming new UAV which will be payload configurable.
The seminar organizer, John Conway, highlighted during the seminar and in talks after the seminar, the centrality of building EW into the operational art for the evolving combat force.
It is about reshaping the payloads, which can be delivered by the integrated force across the spectrum of warfare.
The introduction of the Growler is an important jump start to Australian capabilities, but it comes into the force as the Aussies are working force integration hard.
This effort will inform how they use Growler and according to CDR Mike Paul will be very helpful as the US Navy transitions from a kill chain to a kill web focus.
In short, the seminar provided a case study of shaping a way ahead for broadening the capability, which the evolving 21st century combat force, can deliver.
And as Lt. General (Retired) Davis put it with regard to the Williams Foundation contribution:
“Hats off to the Williams Foundation for what you do.
“You provide a venue where you can share your ideas, be challenged, and to do so in a joint community.
“And it is done in public so can inform a broader discussion.”
The next seminars will address the challenges of transitioning and shaping a combat force able to operate in and prevail in high tempo operations up to and including high intensity warfare.
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The United States has fought relatively slow-motion wars or “slo mo,” land wars for more than a decade and a half.
This does not mean American and Allied combat troops have not experienced the violence and threats commiserate with engaging against a nasty and skilled enemy.
It does mean that the tool sets and concepts of operations are very different and harken back to wars prior to this generation of warfighters.
Not since the Vietnamese War has the United States Military really had a peer-to-peer technologically adept opponent.
And during that war, the Vietnamese put U.S. pilots clearly in harm’s way by shaping their own version of multiple means of trying to destroy U.S. aircraft. From flying capable Russian fighters, the Mig-21J was actually a more advanced close in fighter then the F-4J.
But perhaps the biggest deadly surprise was North Vietnam’s Air Defense Artillery capability, from the ground up.
Whether facing guns or missiles, or enemy fighters for US pilots the sky over Vietnam was a very deadly place to be.
A hit! An F-105 trails smoke after contact with shrapnel from an SA-2. National Museum of the USAF.
After the war in Hanoi in 1994, Ed Timperlake was able to meet some Vietnamese Army Air Defense (ADA) commanders. In 1994 the war was over so when they expressed their Air Defense pride at in defending their country, I listened intently. After all the Vietnam Air Defense mission had been the most technologically adept fighting force in that combat domain for the 20th Century.
It is often said by experienced “Asia Hands,” never underestimate the Peoples Republic of China for they are very clever, but underestimate the Vietnamese at ones mortal peril for they are very smart.
With their national capital attacked from the sky, North Vietnam’s Air Force embraced the Soviet interceptor con-ops of rigid Ground Control Intercept (GCI) doctrine, until they learned from practice that the approach did not work effectively.
Soviet GCI doctrine was what could be called today in the American Military as “kill chain linear” thinking,.
At the height of the air war over Vietnam, successful Vietnam fighter pilots followed a very different approach Being very smart and combat adaptable the North Vietnamese evolved into what today would be called “Kill Webs” concept of fighting. The term wasn’t exactly in their language as “Giết Webs” but sadly for a lot of fellow American combat aviators they had success.
As one source characterized the Vietnamese approach to dealing with American airpower:
The threats had a synergistic effect. The small arms and automatic weapons fire drove the aircraft out of the low altitude arena to higher altitudes where other AAA, SAMs, and enemy fighters were more effective.
At the same time, the heavier AAA, SAMs, and fighters drove the aircraft back down to lower altitudes where those threats were less effective but the small arms fire was murderous. But the most effective North Vietnamese air defense had always been weather.
The North Vietnamese created an integrated air defense system focusing on rapid interconnected Target Acquisition and then executed Target Engagement by empowering the kill shot being made by different “payloads” guns, exploding flack, missiles and fighters to protect their homeland. There approach was to focus on payload-utility by the kill web, rather than a hierarchical kill chain.
There were several “take-aways” from Ed Timperlake’s conversations in Hanoi 1994 when he was representing the Vietnam Children’s Fund in building the first of now fifty one schools pro bono:
The officers and troops manning both Air Defense Artillery Batteries and Missile launch sites were highly selected troops, especially the officers. Often both skilled and sons of North Vietnamese Military/Political leadership class.
The Russians (Soviet Union) did not hesitate to allow the Vietnamese access to their state-of-the art systems. PLA military equipment considered “modern” wasn’t.
The Russian “tattle-tale” ships present in the middle of the US 7th Fleet Yankee Station, chasing the carrier tracks for launching “Alpha Strikes” (as many aircraft heading feet wet as possible) were invaluable sources of strategic and tactical advanced warning.
The Vietnamese ADA commanders perfected not only radar tracking of both arty and SAM guidance but they also knew when to not put signals in space.
The Soviet Union Interceptor/Fighter engagement strategy, of much more rigid Ground Control Intercepts was a real weakness during the Cold War.
The flexibility of having an integrated ADA doctrine, both active and passive was very successful inside a total Air Defense Umbrella was effective and actually avoided fratricide.
They recognized U.S. Air Power was a war winning deciding factor which required them to shift from the Soviet kill chain approach to their early version of the kill web.
It was also evident from their perspective that U.S. domestic politics during the Vietnam War was the asymmetrical weakness to be exploited ultimately leading to the NVA Flag being raised over Saigon in April 1975.
It is not just about the technology; it is also about the political dynamic within which the technology is used which can shape a significant war winning strategy.
The nature of what it felt like to fly against the North Vietnamese “kill web” was captured in an interview we did with the leading USAF “Ace” of Vietnam Chuck De Bellevue.
And this sense of reality in dealing with a peer competitor needs to inform how we shape our way ahead in dealing with the challenge of peer competitors as we shift from a primary focus on the land wars.
Question: Chuck, did your raw gear and did your “tron” warfare (short for all electronic warfare capabilities) in those early days, useful both for a warning and in other ways such as disabling SA-2s and other missiles as far as a tracking solution?
Can you talk a little bit about that and what you had available in those days?
Answer: In the F-4 D model we had a 107. It provided good warning and it also saved my life a couple times.
Question: Was it visual and audio?
Answer: On the raw gear, it was yes. Audio gave me a rattlesnake in my headset.
If the missile was in the air the raw gear itself would start flashing at you.
And then we had a scope and if it was a missile in the air, you’d get a moving break in the strobe.
Col. Charles B. DeBellevue, USAF, Ret., a member of the famed “Triple Nickel” 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron during the Vietnam War, is credited with downing six North Vietnamese MiGs. Here is seen as one of the honored guests Memorial Day 2010 in Columbia Mo.
Question: All of this was coming into your eyes and ears. And then did you have to physically do something in a cockpit to activate any kind of countermeasures or was it just visual – calls to make turns break hard, break – how did you handle the engagement process?
How did the airplane handle it?
How did the “trons” handle it?
Answer: We usually kept our jamming pods in standby. There were repeater pods and they would talk if they heard anything. I didn’t want anybody to know where I was. So we kept them in standby.
We had an occasion to go up to Yen Bai about 70 miles north of Hanoi. We used that as a holding point because Intel said there were no SAM sites there so you could see – on a clear day you could see the river.
One night, there was loop in the river that you could see it pretty easy. So we used to use that as our holding fix. And we loosened up the formation a little bit for me to kill ten minutes. So we loosened up the formation in this holding pattern and as soon as you rolled out going away the raw gear lit up – when I was sitting down in the cockpit doing something – probably planning on the next moves into Hanoi.
And all of a sudden I got a rattlesnake in my headset, raw gear was flashing, and instead of looking up I reached down and turned both jammers from standby to on as I’m looking up.
And had I done it the other way around looking up first I wouldn’t have been here, in between me and three, and there was just about enough room to put a missile between us.
It was an SA2; and that missile was followed by his buddy. And you know how things slow down in combat–Well, I could see their designation on the side of the missile. I couldn’t read it but I could see it.
Question: Are you saying you’re over an area that Intel said that there were no active SAMs?
Answer: Yes but they had mobile SAMs back then. They moved two mobile SAM sites in the bay area and they locked them optically and kept them close to the ground. The missile is non-guided for the first six seconds.
After that the booster falls off and then the antenna is now able to receive signals. And at that point, they fished them up into us. And at that point they were right under us too.
Now with a new administration in power, it is time to really focus again on peer-to-peer high intensity warfighting and how to prevail.
With this forceful return to having to think about how to prevail in a high intensity conflict that now includes much more complex global nuclear weapons threat, there is no gentle transition from “slo mo” to high intensity threats. We need to refocus now and time is very short.
A key element of preparing for the kind of threat posed by North Korea clearly has been missile defense. But missile defense by itself is not enough – there needs to be integrated C2 for the strike and defense force to deal with a state like North Korea.
C2 integration is crucial to allow for the U.S. National Command Authority to have options across the Pacific chessboard to shape the battlespace in order to prevail in times of conflict.
And to do so, requires integration among missile defense systems to provide for integrated solutions across the battlespace.
Adversary missile strikes cut across domains from strategic and tactical “defense” in protecting infrastructure and combat platforms in a classic defense strategy to a more proactive role to enabling more effective strike capabilities by the offensive forces. The challenge in the Pacific demands more and more ADA to enable offensive strike con-ops.
Integrated C2 across the missile defense domain allows for leveraging the particular strengths of individual systems but allows the Combatant Commander to mitigate weaknesses of any particular system in shaping a battlefield wide approach.
There is the need for essentially fixed point defense for facilities, such as airfields and other fixed targets up to and including defending strategic continuity of government sites.
But there is only so much hardening and dispersal that can be accomplished, and tragically there are many soft targets, which cannot be hardened.
This is the situation on the Korean Demilitarized Military Zone (DMZ), which on the North Korean side is anything but “demilitarized.”
The issue of preemption is always on the table, but America really tries to avoid shooting first.
A combat capable Air Force flying from protected air fields and Carriers can use air strikes to take out the adversary’s missile strike force, but “surprise” launch is always a factor especially if not fully mobilized and “hot pad ready.”
The melding of active hardening with aviation “Hot Pad” ready aircraft as well as sea-based cruise missiles is something the American military does very well.
And U.S. Army ADA must be well positioned and ever ready. It is an insurance force that can be a real advantage in prevailing during a “high-intensity” initial engagement and in high intensity conflict the first actions can shape the outcomes.
During a visit by Robbin Laird to the Pacific in 2014, the importance of shaping integrated options and integrated C2 for the offensive-defensive enterprise was highlighted by the then PACAF Commander, “Hawk” Carlisle who later became head of the Air Combat Command and by the Commanding General of the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, Brig. Gen. Daniel Karbler.
The two Generals underscored that there was clear imperative to integrate air and missile defense systems throughout the Pacific to enhance combat effectiveness.
According to General Carlisle: “The PACCOM Commander has put me in charge of how we are going to do integrated air and missile defense for the Pacific theater, which represents 52% of the world’s surface. This is clearly a major challenge and is clearly both a joint and coalition operation.”
In an earlier interview, Brigadier General Daniel Karbler, 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, highlighted that the task of the Army role within an integrated enterprise as follows:
The role of having active defense or an interceptor force is to buy time for [Lieutenant] General [Jan-Marc] Jouas (7th USAF Commander in the Pacific) or General [Hawk] Carlisle (the PACAF Commander) to more effectively determine how to use their airpower. It also allows the National Command Authority to determine the most effective way ahead with an adversary willing to strike US or allied forces and territory with missiles.
General Carlisle focused on the way ahead to achieve the overall integrated air and missile defense mission designed to achieve the objectives outlined by BG Karbler.
General Hawk Carlisle, commander, Air Forces Pacific sits with AFN-Pacific Hawaii News Bureau, to get the general’s thoughts and messages on the state of Air Forces in the Pacific. Credit: Defense Media Activity, Hawaii News Bureau, 4/613
We are pursuing an approach that combines better integration of the sensors with the shooters with command and control.
Command and control are two words.
The way ahead is clearly a distributed force integrated through command and control whereby one develops distributed mission tactical orders (with well understood playbooks) reflecting the commander’s directions and then to have the ability to control the assets to ensure that the sensors and shooters accomplish their mission.
The U.S. has deployed a number of key missile defense systems to enhance the capability to defend the force.
This includes bringing THAAD to Guam; Pac-3 into Japan, Aegis deployed at sea theater wide. In fact, each of these systems – individually — has been highlighted by the US Department of Defense as part of the response to the North Korean threat.
As important as these individual systems are in an of themselves, there is a key need to get on with integrated missile defense which then can be combined with the PACOM Commanders strike force to ensure maximum effectiveness against a real and present danger.
The importance of integrated C2 for a missile defense capability within an overall offensive-defensive enterprise could also be a key contributor to providing tools for a more effective political response to peer competitor threats.
Clearly, crisis management will be a key part of dealing with any challenge like North Korea.
If the National Command Authority has an integrated capability deployed throughout the Pacific this provides a range of options when working with allies, rather than having to rely on systems on allied territory which may or may not be available at the optimal time during a crisis.
In slow mo acquisition thinking, we can take years to get integration done; but with the arrival of a different era, one of peer competitors, and second nuclear age powers, such dragging of feet on building out integrated software solutions to shape a reliable common defense capability is a near term priority.
And because we are talking software upgradeability, whatever the near term capability which can be deployed, it can grow over time as the integration from the ground up further develops.
The US Army has been developing an Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System which clearly can provide for the foundation going forward; without such a system we are left with a Tower of Babel approach to integration which makes little sense in dealing either with the clear and present danger of North Korea or the threats from peer competitors or other Second Nuclear Age powers.
To deal with high intensity threats modernization needs to be combined with mobilization. By having several different locations of builders of missiles within the defense industrial complex geographically dispersed ensures the ability to ramp up missile production. This is a crucial part of getting ready to deal with a high tempo threat.
At the same time by working software commonality across the C2 system, the force commander can then leverage the diversity of launch systems to get a significant punch to the defensive part of the offensive defensive equation.
Cacophony in C2 systems needs to be replaced by an integrated software solution moving forward into which the different defensive launch systems can participate to give the combatant commander the kind of options he or she needs to deal with the near term or longer term threats.
The future is now; we need to move forward on integrated C2 for the defensive forces enabling the offensive-defensive enterprise.
Editor’s Note: Shortly after the Army moved THAAD to Guam, we did an interview with the Army commander involved in THAAD operations in Guam.
2014-01-02 The emergence of the second nuclear age is one of the core challenges facing the US and allied forces in this decade of the 21st century.
Successfully navigating these challenges is not a given, and shaping an effective response is a work in progress.
During 2014, our Second Line of Defense Forum will focus initially on the challenge of the Second Nuclear Age and our guest editor will by Paul Bracken, the author of a book with the same name.
The core point is rather simply put: the rules that applied to the first nuclear age do not necessarily apply to the second.
The new nuclear powers are acquiring nuclear weapons or on paths to obtain them as part of a re-shaping of global dynamics within the 21st century and to re-shape global power balances.
Rather than relegating nuclear weapons to the dust bin of history, the new nuclear powers are seeking to make them center pieces of their global aspirations and ability to position themselves within their regions and beyond.
In his presentation to the Air Force Association Pacific Forum, the PACAF Commander, General Hawk Carlisle, highlighted the contribution made by the US Army in moving a THAAD Battery to Guam in record time.
Instead of a 6 week deployment cycle, the battalion was moved and operational in two weeks time!
We had a chance to follow up on Carlisle’s introduction of the subject with an phone interview with Task Force Talon Commander, LTC Cochrane, the THADD Task Force commander who is currently based on Guam.
Cochrane has been in the US Army for 26 years, six and half years as an enlisted air defense solider and the remainder of the time as an air defense officer. He has spent the majority of his career in divisional units, doing short range air defense.
According to LTC Cochrane: The task force itself is comprised of about 205 soldiers.
There are several different elements to the task force.
The first, of course, is the THAAD battery. This is Alpha 4, THAAD battery out of Fort Bliss, Texas.
Additionally, I have a security element that is out of the 472nd MP Company, out of Fort Wainwright, Alaska.
I also have a couple of different communications elements from units based out of Hawaii and, I do have a captain here from 1-1 ADA in Okinawa.
So, we really are pulling the best from multiple different units to accomplish this mission because we are in a deployment status here on the island of Guam.
SLD: What is your mission?
Lt. Col. Cochrane: The mission here is to defend the island of Guam against the North Korean tactical ballistic missile threats. If the strategic deterrent should fail, our task is to intercept North Korean ballistic missiles. We are here to defend the entire island of Guam.
SLD: General Carlisle highlighted the rapidity of your deployment and considered this a key part of the deterrent structure. Could you discuss the approach?
Lt. Col. Cochrane: This was the first ever deployment of THAAD.
We had a planning timeline of about six weeks to get to any place in the world and to set up and be operational.
We looked at that planning cycle and said: “You know we can do better than that.”
With a real mission on the table, the intensity picked up. We cut the deployment time by 2/3s and pulled in the elements from different locations into an integrated and coordinated force with the Air Force and with Joint Region Marianas (JRM). We were successful because the Air Force, the Navy and the Army pulled together as a joint force.
We initially moved what we call a minimum engagement package by air to Anderson Air Force base. It came in a very rapid timeline on a relatively small number of aircraft (C-17s and C-5s) and allowed us to establish our basic operation and to achieve our initial capability to defend the island. The remainder of the equipment came by sea.
A clear theme in the discussion was how the workings of the joint force or what General Carlisle referred to as cross-domain synergy was a key element to shaping capabilities for the second nuclear age.
Lt. Col. Cochrane: Missile defense is more than just one platform or system. It is a classic case of what you call no platform fights alone. It is a system of systems.
We combine Aegis, with THAAD with short-range defense systems, etc.
For example, at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, the 94th AAMDC and the 613 AOC coordinate air and missile defense fot the Pacific Theater. The Navy and the Air Force all come together and conduct that coordination in terms of how we protect and coordinate our defense so that we are maximizing our capabilities.
It is not just a single system standing alone or operating independently.
It is the inter-dependence and the inter-operability of all these systems to all three of the branches that are actively engaged in missile and air defense.
In my unit, we are looking aggressively at how to cross link with Aegis, for example.
I have been extremely fortunate that Brigadier General Garland, who is the commander of the 36th Wing here has emphasized: “Welcome to Guam. What do you need?”
He has put his wing and their resources at our disposal to execute our mission so when we first came in, we were welcomed with open arms by our Air Force brethren and we are now part of their family.
We interact with the wing commander and the wing vice-commander routinely, several times a week, talking about these missile defense issues.
Additionally, we are integrated into Wing exercises to practice coordinated actions before, during and after TBM engagements.
And we clearly do not want the Aegis and the THAAD firing against the same inbounds just because then we are wasting ammunition on two very capable missiles when they can be used elsewhere.
This is where the jointness of this whole process must come into play.
As we get to this “purple force” concept where all of us are working under a joint task force or a joint commander, it becomes extremely important that we actually do that cross coordination.
I believe that missile defense is only going to become more important as we continue to rebalance to the Pacific strategy that has been directed on us.
I think you are going to end up seeing more and more emphasis on the continued growth of our cooperative joint-ness between the Navy (Aegis ships), the Air Force (Defensive Counter Air) and the Army (Air and Missile Defense).
SLD: In fact, your entire effort is part of what we have referred to as the Second Nuclear Age.
Lt. Col. Cochrane: It is clear that our operational capabilities are important in and of themselves and as part of strategic messaging to North Korea and to our allies and friends.
We tell them, “We are capable. You threaten this island specifically, we are going to defend this island,” and by doing so we are not only sending a strategic message only to North Korea but also to other friends and allies in the area and any potential adversaries.
THE Army Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile battery deployed to Guam nine months ago remains on the island, though long-term plans have not yet been determined. The THAAD battery was deployed from Fort Bliss, Texas in April in response to threats of a missile attack from North Korea. The group, Task Force Talon, is stationed at Andersen Air Force Base.
The task force comprises about 175 personnel. “In addition to the THAAD personnel, Task Force Talon is made up of various soldiers from the 94th Army Air Missile Defense Command, 32nd Army Air Missile Defense Command, 472nd Military Police Company and 311th Theater Signal Command working in a collaborative effort to ensure mission success,” according to Maj. Gabriella M. Mckinney, public affairs officer for the 94th Air Missile Defense Command.
It has not yet been determined whether the deployment will be permanent, according to McKinney. “We will continue to evaluate the requirement for this capability as real world threats continue to unfold to determine the best course of action,” she said. “The specifics of the deployment will be determined at that time.”
In the video above, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), U.S. Army Soldiers from the 94th and 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command (AAMDC); U.S. Navy sailors aboard the USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) and airmen from the 613th Air and Space Operations Center are seen successfully conducting the largest, most complex missile defense flight test ever attempted resulting in the simultaneous engagement of five ballistic missile and cruise missile targets.
This is what a system of systems approach is all about.
The photos below provide a look at the system.
Credit Photos: DOD or Lockheed Martin
The first photo provides a sense of Guam in relationship to North Korea.
The second and third photos show the TEL for the THAAD.
The fourth photo shows the launcher at rest at sunset.
Photos 5 through 7 show the THAAD being launched.
The eighth photo shows U.S. Army Pacific commander Gen. Vincent Brooks takes a photo with the A4 THAAD during his visit to the unit at Andersen AFB, Guam on Sunday, Aug. 18, 2013. The A4 THAAD deployed to Guam in April as a part of the 94th AAMDC Task Force Talon Mission.
The ninth photo shows U.S. Army Pacific commander Gen. Vincent Brooks speaking with soldiers of the A4 THAAD about numerous personnel and operational issues during his visit to the unit at Andersen AFB, Guam, on Sunday, Aug. 18, 2013.
The final photo provides a graphic with regard to how THAAD works.
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Putting President Trump and European Union leaders together on the same page may seem an anomaly.
The love the President has for baiting the EU is only matched by European transatlantic assertion of European values and interests against American “revanchism.”
In the real world, the interests of both the US and the Europeans remain significantly convergent.
Nowhere has this this become more evident than in recent responses to the Chinese penetration of their economies.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has made it a key element of his global outreach to portray his regime as a core driver of 21st century globalization.
In January at Davos World Economic Forum he portrayed himself as the new defender of global order and the polar opposite of the iconoclastic nationalist disrupter, President Trump.
Just as Donald Trump was about to be inaugurated as President, one analyst portrayed the appearance of the Chinese President at the World Economic Forum in January as a new alternative to fading American global economic leadership:
China’s president will preach the advent of a new world order in Davos next week before the high priests of globalisation, who are facing an uprising from voters against their orthodoxy of open markets and borders.
The annual conclave of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps, grouping 3,000 delegates from the worlds of government, business, science and the arts, has created the caricature of “Davos Man”, a rich, rootless globetrotter who worships with fellow disciples in the church of free trade.
But populists are singing from a radically different hymn sheet. Their hostility towards both unfettered trade and immigration has already yielded Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and the rise of once-fringe parties across Europe, including in France and Germany.
The globalist President of China was soon seen in an ascendant role at the moment when President Trump rejected the global climate change Paris agreement (ignoring, for convenience, the Chinese did not have to comply with specific commitments of that accord until many years later).
As Andrew Rettman wrote in a recent EU Observer article:
US president Donald Trump is seen in China as a “gift” for closer EU relations and for tipping the “geo-strategic balance” of power toward Asia.
That is the feeling in Beijing and beyond, according to Alicia Garcia-Herrero, a Hong Kong-based economist from the Bruegel think tank in Belgium, who co-wrote a new study on how to unlock tens of billions of euros in China-EU investment and trade.
“Last year, my children, who go to school in China, didn’t know why so many of their classmates wanted Trump to win the [US] elections, but it was because even normal Chinese families understood the implications. He [Trump] just looked so dumb and so creepy,” she told EUobserver on Tuesday (12 September).
“Trump is the greatest gift that we [the West] could have given to China”, she said.
This Chinese baseline for global expansion of course hid major inconsistencies, particularly the embrace of liberal values within democratic open debate.
When taken into consideration together, this profound division between liberal democracies and a centralized command economy did not suggest future convergence, but rather an historic inflection point in the global distribution of global power.
The first point is rather an obvious one.
The Chinese have little in common with liberal values.
And whatever one think of Trump’s America, the democratic side of the nation has if anything been demonstrated as his agenda becomes redefined through a complex U.S. political process.
For example, there is growing realization in Australia that China is a penetrating power, not a partner in High School Musical globalization.
In a recent interview with Dr. Ross Babbage during a visit to Australia in August 2017, the deep divide was highlighted as a great challenge at this time of history.
The Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans and the Iranians, just to mention the most prominent authoritarian powers, have little in common with our values. We are paying a big price for not highlighting the true nature of the illiberal regimes to our publics.
“Recently, the Prime Minister of Australia, despite his difficult initial discussion with President Trump, made it clear that the North Korean threat to the United States and Australia created common cause and the need for a common response.
“The fundamentals of the ANZUS alliance remain as relevant as ever. The PM was very clear that a thuggish regime with nuclear weapons threatened our way of life.
“We need more recognition of this and preparation for the contest and conflict starring us in the face. This is the real world; not the world we wish we were living in.”
“Part of the problem here, in my view, is that we have not done a good job of telling our publics about the appalling track record of the Russians, and the Chinese, and the others.
“There are some notable exceptions.
“For example, a really good series of reports on ABC Australia in June highlighted the Chinese penetration of Australia, their cyber operations, their attempts at bribery and corruption and the threat which these operations pose to Australia.
“This series triggered further press reporting and to government decisions to review policies and legal frameworks to deal with the internal espionage, cyber and broader challenge posed by the Chinese and others.”
“There is, however, a long way to go. We need to focus much more strongly on the global competitors who don’t share our values and who are working actively to damage us seriously or bring us down. We need to make our own public’s aware of what’s going on, but also project information and other operations back into the counties that are dominated by these kinds of regimes.
At this moment, in back to back announcements, the Trump Administration and the European Union publicly revealed growing concerns with Chinese penetration of their economies.
According to The Wall Street Journal in a story published September 13, 2017:
President Donald Trump on Wednesday blocked a Beijing-backed fund’s attempt to buy an American chip maker, signaling his administration will closely scrutinize Chinese efforts to invest in U.S. semiconductor technology.
Mr. Trump rejected the transaction after the would-be deal makers—Chinese government-backed Canyon Bridge Capital Partners and Lattice Semiconductor Corp. —made a rare, direct appeal to him. They had hoped he would overrule an earlier negative recommendation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., a multiagency panel that reviews deals for national-security concerns.
Instead, the White House said Wednesday that Mr. Trump believes the $1.3 billion transaction could have risked U.S. national security due to “the potential transfer of intellectual property to the foreign acquirer, the Chinese government’s role in supporting this transaction, the importance of semiconductor supply chain integrity to the United States Government, and the use of Lattice products by the United States Government.”
Ironically, in his state of Europe address, the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker ON THE SAME DAY underscored the need to tighten foreign direct investment rules to protect the national security interests of Europe.
“We are not naive free traders. Europe will defend its strategic interests with an EU framework for investment screening.”
And Trump-like, the Commission President had this to say about the European steel industry and China:
Being European also means standing up for our steel industry. We already have 37 anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures in place to protect our steel industry from unfair competition.
But we need to do more, as overproduction in some parts of the world is putting European producers out of business.
This is why I was in China twice this year to address the issue of overcapacity. This is also why the Commission has proposed to change the lesser duty rule.
The United States imposes a 265% import tariff on Chinese steel, but here in Europe, some governments have for years insisted we reduce tariffs on Chinese steel.
I call on all Member States and on this Parliament to support the Commission in strengthening our trade defence instruments. We should not be naïve free traders, but be able to respond as forcefully to dumping as the United States.
It is doubtful Juncker consulted with President Trump on the timing of this statement, but the simultaneous public expressions of concern about China’s ventures and interactions with the economies of Europe and the US should be noted.
Clearly the new President of France has had an impact.
As David Hutt wrote in Forbes on August 17, 2017:
Macron wants to build an “alliance” in the EU to limit the ability of foreign companies to take over European strategic industries. By “foreign” he chiefly means Chinese.
One such takeover happened in May when China’s state-owned ChemChina purchased the Swiss agrochemical giant Syngenta for $43 billion, the largest Chinese overseas takeover to date.
(Berlin and Paris were reportedly angry that the European Commission approved the takeover.)
And now Europe fears that if more Chinese state-firms purchase its leading developers of advanced technology then it will put the continent at an economic and technological disadvantage.
Underlying the overall Chinese global reach has been its expanding economy.
But there are growing indicators that the Chinese economy is not only slowing down but also perhaps facing severe financial troubles as a result of its shockingly large reliance on expansion of debt to drive its growth through the continuing consequences of the Great Financial Crisis which gripped the world in 2008.
Until that global crisis and the world recession it set in motion, China’s growth was primarily reliant on growth of exports to the rest of the world to power domestic growth at a much higher pace than domestic incomes could sustain.
For decades until the 2008 global financial crisis, world trade had grown much faster than the individual national economies, lifting global growth. In late 2008 world trade started collapsing, remaining stalled for a sustained period for the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Since then, world trade recovered partially, but at a rate of growth well below the slow growth experienced in recent years throughout most of the world.
This prolonged world trade slump poses a major challenge to Europe, but especially to Germany, the largest European economy.
Germany is heavily reliant on global trade as its primary engine of economic growth.
In the past few years, its exports to China in several key domains, including autos and heavy machinery, have been copied and leveraged by the Chinese to start ramp up their own exports. China was for several years Germany’s biggest export market.
Now China is not only cutting its imports from Germany but exporting to Germany’s other important markets in around the world.
In short, the Chinese economic slowdown and its ripple effects into Europe and beyond, combined with growing concern of how China leverages their economic investments in the economies of the liberal democracies is creating a strategic inflection point which will have profound effects on the pattern of global development in coming years.
China’s heavy reliance on debt, borrowing from its future performance, is placing new strains on how far it sustain its extraordinary growth rates of the last few decades.
Under President Xi it is extending its direct interests far beyond its neighborhood to the rest of the world in its focused attention to One Belt, One Road expansion into Africa, the rest of Asia, Latin America, Central Europe, and even to beyond the gates of Western Europe requires vast new financial support for its global ambitions.
China is seeking to become a global giant, but it is suffering the limits of what it can do posed by the same realities that are constraining economic performance now being suffered in the US, Europe and Japan.
Its economic limitations are partially revealed in its apparent inability to apply force to alter the behavior of its troublesome neighbor, North Korea.
China may now be facing limitations imposed by excessive borrowing from its future, and may be facing a world also beleaguered by debt and unsustainable financial markets, with continuing slump in world trade.
China may be facing a world which is much less than the Davos globalist Chinese President might have envisaged when he took on the mantle of the world’s new globalist economy leader.
As a Danish colleague put it with regard to China in the North Korean crisis: “Isn’t the problem that China exerts no real power over North Korea and if Xi shows this, China loses all fake cards they are holding.”
The UK has announced its new shipbuilding strategy, one which seeks to leverage the modularity approach introduced by building the new Queen Elizabeth class carriers.
Now the First Sea Lord has addressed the question of the role of the maritime sector in generating broader defense transformation.
He did so in his speech to the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) Naval Technology Conference on 12 September 2017.
His core point was that the modernization of the Royal Navy went far beyond simply building of new ships.
With most of the Royal Navy’s most important projects now in train, we can now look beyond the platforms, to the weapon systems, sensors and other technologies that will keep us at the forefront of capability in the decades to come.
Within that we have the opportunity to work in partnership to help meet the relentless demand for skills in science and technology.
And this, more than anything else, will be the foundation for our nation’s security and prosperity in the years ahead.
He highlighted several key developments both generated by defense and leveraged by defense from the civilian sector: artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous systems, transformation of the man-machine dynamic and the need to expand the capability for more rapid introduction into service of new capabilities.
And one key way to do that is a theme we have emphasized for several years — leveraging software upgradeability.
The Royal Navy has been at the forefront of open architecture in our submarine combat systems for many years and during Unmanned Warrior, a single command and control interface was central to our success.
Now, we must look to introduce open architecture into operational service far more widely.
To that end, later this year HMS Westminster will go to sea fitted with an Open Architecture shared infrastructure which enable the rapid integration and development of new capabilities.
The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Philip Jones, at DESI, September 12, 2107.
The First Sea Lord was looking forward to an apps based solution approach for combat systems.
What this means in practice is that the Type 31e will feature different app-based tools which can access the ship’s data.
These will be operated from a series of touchscreen displays, Siri-style voice controlled assistants and perhaps even augmented reality technology.
This is not a gimmick or a fad.
As modern warfare becomes ever faster, and ever more data driven, our greatest asset will be the ability to cut through the deluge of information to think and act decisively.
He concluded by going back to one of the great innovators in the Royal Navy, Admiral Fisher.
In the early part of the last century, Jackie Fisher fashioned the Royal Navy into a focused fighting machine that could meet the growing challenges Britain faced in an era of global political upheaval.
He did this by sweeping away the ornaments of Victorian imperial power to make way for new technology, from the torpedo and the turbine engine to the submarine and the destroyer.
Most of all he is remembered for HMS Dreadnought, the battleship that was so revolutionary that it rendered all others obsolete at a stroke.
Today, we stand on the cusp of another great technological revolution.
It’s not because of a single ship, like the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers or even the new Dreadnought-class submarines, revolutionary as they will be.
The real revolution comes from a combination of different technologies and trends that are moving forward at the astonishing pace.
They are shaping the future of warfare before our eyes.
Editor’s Note: The speech of the First Sea Lord as presented at DESI.
Admiral Sir Philip Jones, First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff, spoke at the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) Naval Technology Zone on 12 September 2017.
‘Courage and skill – the next steps in the Royal Navy’s technology journey’
It’s wonderful to be surrounded by examples of the maritime expertise found within Britain’s defence sector at DSEI, as I set out the next steps in the Royal Navy’s journey of technological innovation.
When HMS Queen Elizabeth departed her builders earlier this summer I described it as a new era of maritime power and that was not a term I used lightly.
These ships will sit at the heart of the Royal Navy and, alongside the nuclear deterrent, will shape the UK’s authority in the world for the next half century.
But the reason I used the term maritime power – as opposed to purely naval power – is that this is not a journey we take alone.
It is one we share with the maritime industrial sector and the wider defence supply chain.
The Queen Elizabeth-class project sustained hundreds of businesses and thousands of jobs. Together, we proved that maritime investment can be a force for economic prosperity and regional growth as well as national security.
Meanwhile, at Barrow, submarine construction has settled into a steady drumbeat stretching into the 2030s and with the cutting of steel for the future HMS Glasgow, the same is now true for complex shipbuilding on the Clyde.
And what this programme of maritime investment provides us with is a basis to further strengthen our partnership.
Most obviously, the publication of the National Shipbuilding Strategy last week charted a course towards a more sustainable and competitive industrial capacity.
With the Type 31e General Purpose Frigate, we have the opportunity to better align the Royal Navy’s requirements with those of the export market to help support that ambition.
But the opportunity extends far beyond shipbuilding.
Because with most of the Royal Navy’s most important projects now in train, we can now look beyond the platforms, to the weapon systems, sensors and other technologies that will keep us at the forefront of capability in the decades to come.
Within that we have the opportunity to work in partnership to help meet the relentless demand for skills in science and technology.
And this, more than anything else, will be the foundation for our nation’s security and prosperity in the years ahead.
TECHNOLOGICAL AMBITION
At DSEI two years ago, my predecessor outlined the Royal Navy’s technological ambition in bold and ambitious terms.
It is a future based on exploiting rapid developments in autonomy and robotics, additive manufacture, novel weaponry and the power of data, underpinned by continued investment in people and training.
We said we would explore the market to identify new capabilities that could be introduced into service quickly and that in doing so, we would use the Royal Navy’s global reputation for operational excellence to open up new opportunities for British firms and for British R&D.
Over the past two years, I’m pleased to say we’ve done just that.
Last year’s Exercise Unmanned Warrior was a case in point.
We brought together technology firms from around the world to show us what their kit could do when put to the test, with UK companies leading the pack.
Together, we broke records and pushed the boundaries of innovation further than ever before, the ripples of which continue to be felt today.
Six months later, we returned for Exercise Information Warrior, doing the same for cyber, ultra-modern communications, information exploitation and artificial intelligence.
In both cases, we knew that industry was far ahead of the military in exploiting the latest developments, but we were surprised by just how far.
During Information Warrior, for example, chest x-rays were passed through a handheld SATCOM terminal. Normally, this would take 30 minutes to transmit – but using IBM’s ASPERA bandwidth acceleration technology, it took less than 5.
The benefits this could bring to medical teams deployed at sea with a Carrier Strike Group or 3 Commando Brigade ashore – or indeed with any force deployed at range – are obvious.
Of course, other bandwidth accelerators are out there, but time and again we saw examples like this of commercially available technologies that could have wide application across the armed forces.
And of all the many things we learnt from these exercises, the one lesson which stood out more than any other was the need to be faster and more agile in how we develop and introduce new capabilities into service.
NEXT STEPS
I’m proud that the Royal Navy took the initiative to challenge ourselves in this way.
Without doubt, we established the Royal Navy as a leader of innovation within the UK Armed Forces and internationally.
I’d like to pay tribute to my predecessor, Admiral Sir George Zambellas, whose instinct and enthusiasm was the driving force behind both these exercises.
But the question now is where we go from here.
Having demonstrated the art of the possible, the real test of our ambition is to bring these capabilities into service alongside or in place of existing equipment.
In some cases, the way forward is clear.
A good example is the Compact Deployable IT System.
It’s small, light-weight and takes just minutes to configure – perfect for use at sea or in the field.
The Royal Navy’s own innovation team – ‘MarWorks’ – joined with DSTL and Antillion to help accelerate this technology through the development phase.
We put it to use in Information Warrior and, liking what we saw, we’ve decided to introduce it in place of 3 Commando Brigade’s current IT straight away.
But this isn’t simply about swapping old kit for new and carrying on as normal. The full potential of the technological opportunity before us is far greater.
From autonomous systems operating in squads to Artificial Intelligence-assisted decision making, what we’ve glimpsed over the past two years has the potential to entirely change our approach to operations.
This requires big decisions, with far reaching consequences.
Are we, for instance, prepared to remove existing platforms from service in order to create the financial and manpower headroom to introduce new systems which, in time, could deliver truly transformative advances in capability?
Of course, change on this scale can be disconcerting, but if we hesitate, then we risk falling further behind.
So, for example, based on our experience from Unmanned Warrior and Information Warrior, we know that remotely operated and autonomous systems can make a far greater contribution to operations than is currently the case.
As a first step, we are ready to shift the process of trial and experimentation from the exercise arena to the operational theatre.
That’s why we have deployed three Unmanned Underwater Vessels on board the survey ship HMS Enterprise during her current NATO deployment.
But I think we can go further still.
So today I can announce the Royal Navy’s aim to accelerate the incremental delivery of our future Mine Countermeasures and Hydrographic Capability (MHC) programme.
Our intention is to deliver an unmanned capability for routine mine countermeasure tasks in UK waters in two years’ time.
Similarly, from what we’ve seen over the past two years, we know it should be perfectly possible for the Type 31e frigate to operate a vertical lift Unmanned Air System alongside or perhaps even in place of a manned helicopter from the moment the first ship enters service from 2023.
And as a precursor to this, we plan to work with our partners in the aerospace industry to demonstrate such a capability on a Type 23 frigate next year.
So, just as I challenge the Royal Navy to take the next step forward, there’s also a challenge for you – our partners in industry – to meet us half way with credible solutions that can fulfil our requirements.
And mark my words: other navies will follow in our wake, reinforcing the reputation of British technology and expertise to a global audience.
OPEN ARCHITECTURE
The pace of technological change is relentless – iteration is constant.
Our current processes – whereby software updates can take months to introduce – simply aren’t fast enough to match our ambition. We need to find an alternative.
The Royal Navy has been at the forefront of open architecture in our submarine combat systems for many years and during Unmanned Warrior, a single command and control interface was central to our success.
Now, we must look to introduce open architecture into operational service far more widely.
To that end, later this year HMS Westminster will go to sea fitted with an Open Architecture shared infrastructure which enable the rapid integration and development of new capabilities.
If successful, we will roll this system out to the rest of the Type 23s by 2020, and the remainder of the Fleet thereafter.
And because this will form the basis for the integration of all weapon systems, engineering sensors and off-board logistics in the future, we have specified that the new Type 31e General Purpose Frigate should be designed with open architecture from the outset.
What this means in practice is that the Type 31e will feature different app-based tools which can access the ship’s data. These will be operated from a series of touchscreen displays, Siri-style voice controlled assistants and perhaps even augmented reality technology.
This is not a gimmick or a fad. As modern warfare becomes ever faster, and ever more data driven, our greatest asset will be the ability to cut through the deluge of information to think and act decisively.
Equally, we need to recognise the aptitudes and instincts of young people leaving schools and colleges today – the so called smartphone generation – and design systems and processes in a way that plays to their strengths.
Open Architecture provides the means to do just that – melding technology opportunity with human ingenuity and skill which, incidentally, is the secret behind the Royal Navy’s success over the past 500 years.
Artificial Intelligence is also an important part of this future.
Under Project Nelson, the Royal Navy aims to develop a ship’s ‘Mind’ at the centre of our warships and headquarters to enable rapid decision making in complex, fast moving operations.
But these opportunities also require us to change our approach to how we design and develop systems, by adopting and defining the Royal Navy’s open standards to bring about a more iterative and collaborative approach.
The Royal Navy must work more closely with SMEs and start-ups. We need to tap into their entrepreneurial expertise and, in return, we can help give them the big break they need to succeed.
We also want to find people who might not have trodden the usual conventional career paths but who have the creative and disruptive approach we need.
During Information Warrior we brought together some of the UK’s leading experts in artificial intelligence for the UK Armed Forces first ever AI hackathon.
We provided them with more than a terabyte’s worth of information – including radar and sonar data – as well as access to an Open Architecture infrastructure with standardised data formats and Royal Navy defined interfaces.
Over 3 days they were able to use this information to develop astonishing solutions to real problems at extraordinary speed.
We proved, for example, that a drugs smuggler is no longer a bobbing needle in an oceanic haystack but has an identifiable algorithmic fingerprint. In the engineering world, we can predict, and therefore prevent, component failures.
So, in future, hackathons and agile sprints will become regular events, and we are programming a regular series of Information Warrior exercises between now and 2021.
Scoping for Information Warrior 18 is already underway and we will need your help, through MarWorks, 700X Naval Air Squadron and others, to make it a success.
It’s encouraging that a number of industry partners have already begun to plan their involvement – and their investment – accordingly, and I would welcome your thoughts on the possibility of an Unmanned Warrior 2020.
INVESTING IN SKILLS
Underpinning all of this is our ability to meet the demand for skills in science, technology, engineering and maths; both within the Royal Navy, and more widely.
I expect most of you saw the images from Nautilus 100 project last month, through which we challenged some of the brightest apprentices and graduates in UK industry to imagine what the future of submarine technology may look like fifty years from now.
From drones that dissolve on-demand to algae-electric propulsion, science and engineering doesn’t get more exciting than this.
Last week, the Government launched its “Year of Engineering 2018” campaign with the aim of inspiring the next generation and Nautilus 100 is proof that Royal Navy can make a huge contribution to that objective.
But I know we can do more than simply inspire – and in truth, we can’t afford to wait around in the hope that the education system produces the people we need. We’re prepared to play a much more active role to steer more young people to careers in these areas from an early age.
That’s why we’re working with companies from across the defence and maritime sectors to sponsor a growing number of University Technical Colleges.
The latest of these – a purpose built, state-of-the-art College in Portsmouth – opened its doors yesterday, just a stone’s throw from QinetiQ’s soon-to-be built facility at Portsdown Technology Park.
The initial tranche of 140 students will eventually grow to 600, from which 150 STEM qualified students will enter the local and national economy every year.
We have also met with the Scottish Government to identify ways we can support the promotion of STEM skills north of the border.
Today I can also announce that the Royal Navy is to shortly affiliate with four further UTCs, in Aston, Reading, Newton Abbot and Peterborough.
Unlike Portsmouth, none of these places are traditional naval towns – only one of them is near the sea – but that’s not the point.
The Royal Navy’s future success is indivisible from the UK’s strength in the design and manufacture of advanced systems, and the associated research and development. It’s in our interests to help support the national requirement for STEM skills, as well as our own.
We don’t expect every student we work with to join the Navy, but we do want to play our part to help them develop the skills required for a successful and rewarding career – and whether they ultimately choose a career in uniform or in industry, we still gain in the long run.
CONCLUSION
I’ve spoken a lot about the future but, in drawing to a close, I want to dip into the past.
In the early part of the last century, Jackie Fisher fashioned the Royal Navy into a focused fighting machine that could meet the growing challenges Britain faced in an era of global political upheaval.
He did this by sweeping away the ornaments of Victorian imperial power to make way for new technology, from the torpedo and the turbine engine to the submarine and the destroyer.
Most of all he is remembered for HMS Dreadnought, the battleship that was so revolutionary that it rendered all others obsolete at a stroke.
Today, we stand on the cusp of another great technological revolution.
It’s not because of a single ship, like the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers or even the new Dreadnought-class submarines, revolutionary as they will be.
The real revolution comes from a combination of different technologies and trends that are moving forward at the astonishing pace.
They are shaping the future of warfare before our eyes – but they offer the opportunity to keep Britain safer and more prosperous in the years ahead.
Of course, letting go of the familiar to make way for the new is never easy.
A degree of risk is inevitable, but then nothing in innovation or warfare has ever been achieved by playing it safe; and as I see it, the biggest risk of all is carrying on as we are.
International security is deteriorating and demands on the Navy are growing – public spending remains tight – why would we not adopt new solutions if they can help us square the circle?
Ultimately, it’s about courage as an organisation. The Royal Navy has always succeeded by being bold.
We’ve seen what the technology can do.
Now we must take a brave step forward to embrace the opportunity before us – and I intend to lead the Royal Navy to do just that.
2017-09-22 The USS America is the new kid on the block in terms of amphibious warfare.
It has been joined in the Alligator Dagger by another new kid on the block as well, the aviation modified support ship, the USNS Puller.
USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB-3), (formerly USNS Lewis B. Puller (T-ESB-3)), (formerly T-MLP-3/T-AFSB-1) is the first purpose-built Expeditionary Mobile Base (previously Mobile Landing Platform, then Afloat Forward Staging Base) vessel for the United States Navy.
It’s one of two Expeditionary Sea Base (ESB) variants of the U.S. Navy’s planned fleet of Expeditionary Transfer Dock vessels.
We have visited both ships during their construction period and have highlighted their contributions to the evolving amphibious task force which the USN-Marine Corps team are crafting for 21st century operations.
According to an article by MC2 Alexander Ventura II, USS America Public Affairs, the USS America has recently completed Alligator Dagger 2017.
GULF OF ADEN – Marines and Sailors aboard the amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA 6) with the embarked 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) and Amphibious Squadron (PHIBRON) 3 rehearsed amphibious operations and combat sustainment in the vicinity of Djibouti during Alligator Dagger 2017 Sept. 4-20.
Alligator Dagger is a dedicated, unilateral combat rehearsal led by Naval Amphibious Forces, Task Force 51/5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, in which combined Navy and Marine Corps units of the America Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and embarked 15th MEU were able to train and employ integrated capabilities available to U.S. Central Command both afloat and ashore.
The exercise also involved the amphibious dock landing ship USS Pearl Harbor (LSD 52) and amphibious transport dock ship USS San Diego (LPD 22) of the America ARG, along with the expeditionary support base ship USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB 3), the newly commissioned afloat forward staying base variant of the mobile landing platforms.
As additional support, the ARG also utilized the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS Howard (DDG 83) and USS Kidd (DDG 100). Training with a wide range of ship types and classes during Alligator Dagger allowed the ARG to refine their maritime capabilities and preparing them for tactical requirements and future operations.
“As we entered the 5th Fleet area of operations we were well aware that we had to acclimate as an ARG/MEU team to both the environment in terms of weather and the threat,” said Capt. Rome Ruiz, commander, PHIBRON 3.
“We have a wide range of capabilities between our ships, aircraft, logistical equipment and personnel, which enables our blue-green team to handle multiple missions at one time.
Alligator Dagger has been a valuable opportunity for the ARG/MEU team to not only rehearse for new and ongoing operations but to also demonstrate our combat proficiency and flexible combat potential in support of crisis response and regional stability.”
The rehearsal focused on amphibious assaults; helicopter-borne raids; visit, board, search and seizure operations; air strikes; defense of the amphibious task force; integrated ground-and-air fires; tactical recovery of personnel; ground reconnaissance; medical casualty evacuations; combat marksmanship and quick reaction force and casualty evacuation rehearsals.
“We have trained extensively to enhance our methods and responses to possible scenarios that we may see,” said Capt. Joseph Olson, America’s commanding officer.
“I’m very proud of the team work throughout this training evolution. I’m confident that through the crew’s grit, tactical knowledge and competence, we’ll be ready to meet whatever challenges lie ahead.”
The 15th MEU consists of the command element; aviation combat element, Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 161 (Reinforced); the ground combat element, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines; and the logistics combat element, Combat Logistics Battalion 15.
While in the region, the southern California-based Navy-Marine Corps team falls under CTF 51/5, and will help ensure the free flow of commerce, provide crisis response and support ongoing missions in the 5th Fleet area of operations.
The role of the USS Puller was the focus of attention in a story published on 9/21/17 provided by the US Navy:
U.S. 5TH FLEET AREA OF OPERATIONS – Sailors and Marines aboard the expeditionary sea base USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB 3) and Marines assigned to the 15th Marine expeditionary unit (MEU) and Fleet Anti-terrorist Security Team Central Command completed combat rehearsals for Alligator Dagger 2017, Sept. 16.
Alligator Dagger, led by Naval Amphibious Forces, Task Force 51/5th Marine Expeditionary Expedition Brigade, is a dedicated, unilateral combat rehearsal that combined Navy and Marine Corps units of the America Amphibious Ready Group and embarked 15th MEU to practice, rehearse and exercise integrated capabilities available to U.S. Central Command both afloat and ashore.
The exercise also tested USS Puller’s maritime capabilities for crisis response and contingency operations within U.S. 5th Fleet.
“We deployed with the ability to embark other forces including the mine hunting unit, which allows us to sweep a safe path to the beach for the amphibious forces,” said Lt Cmdr. Douglas Ivey, the Puller’s combat system’s officer. “Since then we’ve been used as a support vessel for various aviation assets, acted as a target vessel for visit, board, search and seizure exercises and provided the mine hunting boats for surface exercises.”
Commissioned Aug. 17, Puller is the first U.S. ship to be commissioned outside of the United States and the first of the expeditionary sea base variant. Due to its versatility and range of capabilities, the ship continues to be assessed for use in a variety of potential mission areas.
“A lot of what we’re doing in Alligator Dagger 2017 is learning what this ship can do,” said Ivey. “This is a new platform. It was originally designed for aviation mine counter measures and special operation forces support, but now that we’re using it in an operational environment, we realized that USS Puller has the potential to support operations in a lot of different ways. ”
The ship also demonstrated its ability to support training for the 15th MEU’s Low Altitude Air Defense Detachment (LAAD), further strengthening its blue-green team integration.
“While we were onboard we had the opportunity to conduct live fire gun shoots, weapons training with Puller Sailors as well as establish training plans for defense from low altitude air threats for the ship,” said Capt. Thomas Rees, officer in charge, LAAD. “Any time we have a chance to train our personnel on a different platform or environment it improves their ability to defend no matter what the surroundings.”
Expeditionary base USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB 3) is forward-deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations to extend U.S. Naval Forces Central Command’s maritime reach in 5th Fleet by supporting a wide variety of missions including counter-piracy operations, maritime security operations, humanitarian aid, disaster relief and crisis response operations.
U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations encompasses about 2.5 million square miles of water area and includes the Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Red Sea and parts of the Indian Ocean. The expanse comprises 20 countries and includes three critical choke points at the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal and the Strait of Bab al Mandeb at the southern tip of Yemen.
And in an article written by Captain Maida Zheng, 15th Marine Expeditinary Unit, and published on 9/21/17 , the role of the 15th MEU was the focus of attention.
DJIBOUTI (Sept. 21, 2017) – The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) and the America Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) concluded Exercise Alligator Dagger, the largest regional amphibious combat rehearsal, Sept. 20.
Alligator Dagger is designed to integrate and synchronize capabilities that are available to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) both afloat and ashore to ensure forces are postured and prepared to execute operations at sea, from the sea, and ashore.
The 15th MEU has been the first to fight, both from the sea and ashore. The MEU spearheaded Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1992, launched the longest amphibious-heliborne assault in history into Afghanistan in October 2001 and established Camp Rhino, and boarded German-owned hijacked Motor Vessel (M/V) Magellan Star in 2010 to swiftly regain control of the vessel, detaining nine Somali pirates.
“Our distinct ability to gain access to critical areas anywhere in the world with ground, air and logistics forces enables us to counter the actions of non-state actors who may threaten the security and stability of the region,” said Col. Joseph Clearfield, the 15th MEU commanding officer.
“The dangers we are seeing in the 5th Fleet area of responsibility are extremist ideologies that have complete disregard for humanity and pose a serious terrorist threat to this region and to our homeland. We are looking forward to working ‘by, with, and through’ partner forces to militarily defeat violent extremist organizations in the area of responsibility,” Clearfield added.
Alligator Dagger provided an unparalleled opportunity for the ARG and MEU to practice critical mission sets that enhance capabilities inherent to the Navy-Marine Corps team. Marines and Sailors rehearsed various water and land-based exercises, ranging from live-fire events and explosive ordnance disposal missions conducted on ranges in the vicinity of Arta Beach, to visit, board, search and seizure (VBSS) operations on static and motor platforms off the coast of Djibouti.
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The 15th MEU’s Force Reconnaissance Detachment completed two VBSS full-mission profiles, practicing the same mission set the Marines conducted for MV Magellan Star. First, the Helicopter Assault Force fast-roped via an MH-60S Sea Hawk onto USS LEWIS B. PULLER (ESB 3), an expeditionary sea base designed to provide dedicated support for air mine countermeasures and special warfare missions around the globe.
The Reconnaissance Marines quickly descended and searched the vessel, detaining any hostile individuals in the process. The next day, the Boat Assault Force moved into position via rigid hull inflatable boats (RHIBs) and latched a ladder onto the side of the ship to begin their assault.
“During both operations, the Sea Hawk served as an aerial sniper over-watch and close air support (CAS) platform as the Marines took control of the vessel,” explained U.S. Navy Lt. Laura Starck, the MH-60S Sea Hawk pilot who flew during the mission. “This is a typical integration piece for us and proves our capabilities as a multi-mission platform.”
Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 161 (Reinforced) recertified several CH-53E Super Stallion and MV-22B Osprey pilots for night systems qualifications in high-light level and low-light level, as well as AH-1Z Cobra and UH-1Y Huey pilots in close air support during Alligator Dagger. These qualifications enable the Aviation Combat Element (ACE) to provide the six functions of Marine Aviation to the Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF).
“The ACE’s Marine Air Traffic Control Mobile Team provided air traffic control functions while training with Djiboutian tower personnel, enabling safe air operations in the area as well as developing working relationships with the host nation airfield,” explained Maj. Bjorn Thoreen, the operations officer for VMM-161.
AV-8Bs, RQ-21As and H-1s conducted CAS and tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel (TRAP) mission rehearsals while MV-22s and CH-53s conducted forward arming and refueling point (FARP), TRAP and casualty evacuation training. The ACE externally lifted a 21,600 pound aircraft tow tractor from USS America (LHA 6) to USS Pearl Harbor (LSD 52), which helped enable the LSD to become an air capable ship.
“Having the LSD as an air capable ship enables the MAGTF commander to have another afloat forward staging base option in the area if desired to conduct operations from,” explained Thoreen.
The training achieved by the ACE during Alligator Dagger was critical to prepare for expeditionary operations in the CENTCOM area of operations.
Throughout the course of Alligator Dagger, the Battalion Landing Team (BLT) 1st Battalion, 5th Marines focused its training on core infantry skills.
“The austere environment presented a unique opportunity to rehearse infantry actions and employ weapon systems in support of maneuver in the world’s roughest terrain and in an environment most of our Marines are not accustomed to operating in,” said Maj. Joseph Fontanetta, the BLT operations officer. “We employed all organic weapon systems and conducted supported live-fire attacks up to the squad level, sustaining skills for possible real-world employment,” he explained.
The BLT’s motorized units, made up of the Combined Anti-Armor Team and Light Armored Reconnaissance, conducted static gunnery for all crew-served weapons systems as well as fire and maneuver up to the section level.
The BLT also conducted a fire support coordination exercise that included all of the BLT’s Fire Support Teams as well as artillery, mortars and integration with the MEU’s Air Naval Gun Liaison Company, the ARG’s MH-60 detachment, Hueys, Cobras and Harriers with the ACE. The BLT practiced combined arms employment to support maneuver, conducting basic call for fire, immediate suppression, illumination, and suppression of enemy air defense missions.
“By integrating the above elements to support the maneuver of ground forces, we were able to demonstrate our ability to bring all elements of the MAGTF to bear on enemy forces,” said Fontanetta.
The Logistics Combat Element (LCE) provided combat logistics support and sustainment for all elements ashore throughout the execution of Alligator Dagger. Support ranged from food and water resupply to the execution of convoy operations that helped sustain forces ashore.
Engineers produced more than 46,000 gallons of water over a period of eight days. The Landing Support Detachment established a Landing Force Support Party executing 77 hours of operations during a 10 day period — serving as a central hub for entry and exit of equipment and personnel for the America ARG.
“This training enabled the LCE to conduct expeditionary operations providing combat logistics support from the sea and facilitate the operational tempo and reach of the battalion landing team to operate deeper into the Arta battle space without delaying or degrading training opportunities,” said Maj. George Steinfels, the Combat Logistics Battalion 15 operations officer. “The CLB provides a unique advantage which enables this MAGTF to sustain operations afloat and ashore for extended periods.”
Within 48 hours of arriving ashore, the LCE commenced water production and the establishment of a beach support area/combat logistics support area that provided a command and control hub for all elements arriving ashore.
The LCE quickly and effectively transitioned inland, conducting more than 40 combat logistics patrols for over 120 hours of convoy operations, transporting an impressive 25,400 gallons of water, 590 gallons of fuel, 7,800 meals, approximately 3,500 kilograms of ice and 18 pallets of ammunition, supporting more than 400 personnel movements covering a total of 3,870 miles of road.
The LCE’s ability to sustain the MEU during Alligator Dagger demonstrated its ability to sustain the MEU in real world operations – demonstrating the expeditionary prowess of the amphibious force.
“The ARG/MEU’s ability to rapidly maneuver integrated Navy and Marine Corps forces from across the U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility to provide immediate response options is key to ensuring command and control of forces at sea, from the sea, and ashore,” said Brig. Gen. Frank Donovan, commander of Naval Amphibious Forces, Task Force 51/5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade.
“Alligator Dagger is a critical combat rehearsal that ensures our Sailors and Marines are fully capable of conducting operations across the full spectrum of conventional, unconventional and hybrid warfare. After seeing the ARG/MEU complete a series of complex rehearsals in austere conditions, I’m confident that they are postured and prepared to execute any crisis response mission within the AOR at a moment’s notice.”
Serving as the nation’s premier crisis response force, the 15th MEU and America ARG are forward deployed and poised to rapidly respond to crises in the 5th Fleet area of responsibility.
2017-09-13 USS Abraham Lincoln, the first US Navy aircraft carrier capable of accommodating the F-35C Lightning II, welcomed the fifth-generation jet fighter on board earlier this month.
The “Grim Reapers” of Strike Fighter Squadron 101 (VFA 101), the training squadron for the F-35C, joined the USS Abraham Lincoln while underway on September 3.
“The F-35C is still in a testing phase, so it is not fully operational yet,” said Lt. Cmdr. Chris Karapostoles, a pilot assigned to VFA 101.
“We are the training squadron for the F-35C, so we are onboard this ship conducting our carrier qualification training, qualifying pilots, landing signal officers and maintenance crews.”
The launching and recovering of the F-35Cs presented an opportunity for the crew of Abraham Lincoln to work with a new aircraft and play a role in the development of this new fighter jet.
“Being part of the primary flight control team for the landing and launching of the F-35Cs was such a unique experience,” said Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handling) Airman Mariana Monima.
“The F-35Cs are so amazing and powerful. I feel privileged to have been a part of this historic event.”
According to the F-35 Lightning II Pax River Integrated Test Force, the F-35C should reach its initial operational capacity in 2018.
“I love the F-35C,” said Karapostoles. “Compared to other jets it’s more powerful and really just a beast. Some of the controls are different, which can take a little bit of getting used to, but that’s what we have training like this for.”
USS Abraham Lincoln is underway conducting training after successful completion of carrier incremental availability.
The importance of the F-35 for the Carrier Air Wing was highlighted in an interview we conducted in 2015 with Rear Admiral (Retired) Manazir, the recently retired Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Systems, OPNAV N9 when he was Director of Air Warfare.
Our modernization strategy will make us even more effective to deal with the future mission set.
What the higher-end capabilities that are delivered with F-35B and C and then the future air wing that includes unmanned give us is the capability to really own that battle space, and all domains of it. It can be flexed from the higher-end war fight down to delivering combat power ashore from the sea base.
Going into a high-end battle space with F-35Bs and Cs will allow us to identify more of the players in that battle space than we did before. With the information gathering and data fusion capability resident in the F-35, you can empower the rest of the air wing.
The F-35 is truly revolutionary technology.
The ability to bring in that much information into a single platform, share it together via machine language and put that picture together is game changing. The ability to then coalesce that much data into knowledge is unprecedented.
If you are operating over the battle space, like a counterterrorism situation, where you have a lower-end air-to-air threat, you can operate, and persist over a ground battle space as you collect information and shape a much more rapid strike capability as well. The decision cycle can accelerate in either the higher end or lower end fights.
The point can be put simply: we are expanding our capability to shape an agile force to operate throughout the battlespace and to deal with the spectrum of threats which a sea base would be tasked to operate against.
The F-35 will be a contributor to shaping the overall modernization strategy.
The F-35 has a powerful ability to share information, the ability to sense the battlespace, whether it’s signals from a surface naval vessel, signals from an air contact, ID-ing the air contact at long-range, or processing and identifying targets on the ground, all tasks that we’re going to have to do going forward to win.
The F-35 is a key element in the transition of the surface navy from the kill chain to the kill web and to the enhanced capability for the fleet to deliver distributed lethality.
As Ed Timperlake, a former Naval Aviator, who was honored to engage with the first CO of Top Gun the late “Mugs” McKeown in order do a worldwide assessment of tactical aviation for the CIA at the height of the Cold war, has argued:
The skillfulness and success of fighter pilots in aerial combat is an extensively researched yet modestly understood and fundamentally complex concept.
Innumerable physical and psychological factors along with chance opportunities affect a pilots facility for success in air combat.
Perhaps the best narrative of the intangibles of the skill and courage of a fighter pilot was captured by the author Tom Wolfe in his seminal work The Right Stuff.
From the first day a perspective fighter pilot begins their personal journey to become a valuated and respected member of an elite community, serving as an operational squadron pilot, the physical danger is real.
But so is the most significant force for being the absolute best that a fighter pilot can feel which is day in and day out peer pressure by those they really and truly respect, their squadron mates.
The engagement process to prepare for combat at the Fighter Pilot level of thinking about a different type of “fight” that the F-35 may bring to the fleet is critical.
As the combat/Test Pilots at Navy Pax: put it during our interview there last year:
In this interview, we had a chance to discuss the results to date and the way ahead with LCDR Daniel “Tonto” Kitts, a VX-23 Test Pilot who is working on F-35C carrier suitability.
Also participating in the interview was CDR Theodore “Dutch” Dyckman, a fleet combat pilot and now a VX-23 Test Pilot and the Pax River ITF Operations Officer.
CDR Dyckman flew in both DT-I and DT-II and is preparing for DT-III later this year.
“Tonto” is now working as a test pilot focusing on carrier suitability, but he also has significant operational experience with the “Rhino,” otherwise known as the Super Hornet.
Question: Clearly, the Super Hornet is an excellent airplane, but the F-35 is a very different aircraft with a different approach to air system operations.
How do you see the F-35 affecting tactical training?
Answer: With the current air wing (i.e, with the Super Hornet and Hornet as the tip of the spear), we are wringing out our tactics for a tactical advantage, which is also, at the same time, at the edge of the envelope for survival.
We are spending a lot of time making sure that we have the right tactics and the mastery of those tactics by pilots to survive and succeed.
It is about keeping a level of competence and capability where you’re not going to die.
There are points where you have a twenty second window.
You miss that window and you might be blown up.
When you’re traveling at those speeds, we are talking really only a couple of seconds that you have.
And, if you’re not performing tactics exactly as they’re prescribed, you put yourself in a kill zone.
With the F-35, we are jumping a generation in tactics and now looking at the expanded battlespace where we can expand our impact and effect.
You need to take a generational leap so we are the ones not playing catch up with our adversaries.
2017-09-12 The Aussies last year launched their new shipbuilding strategy.
Now Australia has been joined by the UK officially launched its new strategy.
And this one is informed by a very successful national mobilization effort to deliver modules to a central assembly point and to then put together the largest ship ever built in the United Kingdom.
The Queen Elizabeth class carriers tapped into civilian as well as a defense contracting base to build the new ships.
The UK government envisages something similar for a new class of frigates for the Royal Navy.
According to a story published on the UK Ministry of Defence website on September 6, 2017, the UK MoD has launched a new National Shipbuilding Strategy which sets out plans for the first batch of Type 31e frigates.
Sir John Parker’s independent report into British naval shipbuilding proposed far-reaching recommendations to transform the UK maritime industry and boost the prosperity of regions, shipyards and maritime supply chains across the country.
Today’s Strategy sees the Government accept Sir John’s recommendations and step up to what he called a prospective ‘renaissance’ in British shipbuilding.
Building on the Government’s industrial strategy, it outlines an ambition to transform the procurement of naval ships, make the UK’s maritime industry more competitive, grow the Royal Navy fleet by the 2030s, export British ships overseas, and boost innovation, skills, jobs, and productivity across the UK.
It announces the government’s plan to procure new Type 31e General Purpose Frigates. A price cap has been set of no more than £250M each for the first batch of five frigates.
In line with standing UK policy on warships they will be built in the UK.
They could be built in a way which could see them shared between yards and assembled at a central hub. The first ships are set to be in service by 2023. Shipyards will be encouraged to work with global partners to ensure the vessel is competitive on the export market.
Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said:
“This new approach will lead to more cutting-edge ships for the growing Royal Navy that will be designed to maximise exports and be attractive to navies around the world.
“Backed up by a commitment to spend billions on new ships, our plan will help boost jobs, skills, and growth in shipyards and the supply chain across the UK.
The Strategy sets out the government’s commitment to work with industry to reinvigorate and maximise export success.
The Type 31e will be designed to meet the needs of the Royal Navy and with the export market in mind from the beginning.
This could see industry’s customer become not only the Royal Navy but for the navies of Britain’s allies and partners.
The MOD is committed to new ships for the Royal Navy through its rising budget and £178bn equipment plan.
HMS Queen Elizabeth, the UK’s new aircraft carrier, which was block built around the country. Credit: UK MoD
In July, at BAE’s Govan shipyard, the Defence Secretary cut steel for the first of eight Type 26 frigates, HMS Glasgow.
The £3.7 billion contract for the first three, the largest for naval ships this decade, will secure hundreds of high skilled jobs on the Clyde until 2035 and hundreds more in the supply chain across the UK.
Sir John Parker said:
“I am very impressed by the courage that the Secretary of State has shown – and the Government – in adopting my recommendations, which were very extensive, and will change the shape of naval shipbuilding over the country in the future.
“The next challenge is to come up with a world-leading design; one that can satisfy the needs of the Royal Navy and the export market. We have the capability to do that, the will is there and it is a tremendous opportunity for UK shipbuilding. I see no reason why industry will not rise to that challenge. There is an incredible keenness from around the country, from Scotland to Merseyside, to the South West and over to Belfast.”
The option to build the Type 31e frigates in blocks reflects how the biggest ship ever built for the Royal Navy, the 65,000-tonne HMS Queen Elizabeth, was constructed.
The aircraft carrier was built in blocks by over 10,000 people in six main British cities. She was then assembled in Rosyth, before commencing sea trials in June and arriving in her home port of Portsmouth last month.
Her sister ship HMS Prince of Wales, built in the same way, is also now structurally complete and will be officially named in a ceremony on 8 September. This method has also been tried and tested on the UK’s new polar research ship, RRS Sir David Attenborough, with shipyards across the country collaborating in the block build.
The Strategy is an important part of the government’s broader industrial strategy that focuses on increasing economic growth across the country and investing in a more skilled workforce.
The Government will work together with industry to provide the certainty and support the need to become internationally competitive.
Such a move will not only boost the British economy and jobs, but it will also help to create a more stable and well-protected world.
According to the Daily Telegraph in a story written by Alan Tovey, its industry editor on September 6, 2017:
A radical shake-up of how warships will be built for the Royal Navy that aims to spread the work around the country has been unveiled by the Ministry of Defence.
Proposals floated by industrialist Sir John Parker in his review of the sector last year have been backed by Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon in a move intended to deliver budget vessels to the British military that are also aimed at being attractive to foreign buyers.
Under the National Shipbuilding Strategy, Britain will buy five “Type 31e” general purpose frigates – a cut-price warship – to bolster the Royal Navy’s depleted fleet, with the first one intended to enter service in 2023.
Sir John recommended the new vessels be built at shipyards around the country, using the “modular” system employed to construct the huge Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers.
How the new Type 31e frigates might look. Credit: Daily Telegraph
This saw giant blocks fabricated at sites around the UK, before being towed to Rosyth in Scotland were they were integrated into the 65,000-tonne ships by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance, made up of BAE Systems, Babcock and Thales working with the MoD.
Backing his plans could threaten BAE’s near-monopoly on building vessels for the Navy, throwing it open to other entrants to the market, and raising concerns about jobs at the defence giant’s naval operations focused at its Clyde facilities in Glasgow.
Announcing the plan, the MoD said a £250m-per-ship price cap had been set for the vessels, which were revealed in the last defence review when the Government said it would purchase only eight of the more capable Type 26 frigates, with the Type 31 making up numbers.
“This new approach will lead to more cutting-edge ships for the growing Royal Navy that will be designed to maximise exports and be attractive to navies around the world,” the Defence Secretary said, adding the strategy would “help boost jobs, skills, and growth in shipyards and the supply chain across the UK”…..
And a story published on September 6, 2017 in The Financial Times added this detail with regard to the export focus of the program as well:
A shipbuilding strategy, to be unveiled by the Ministry of Defence on Wednesday, will cap the cost of five new warships at no more than £250m each.
Crucially, it will also open the way for the ships — lightweight Type 31e frigates — to be constructed in sections by different companies across the UK, before being assembled at a central hub.
This contrasts with the current position, under which BAE enjoys a monopoly on complex warship building in Britain. Michael Fallon, defence secretary, said the change in approach outlined in the new shipbuilding strategy would “lead to more cutting-edge ships for the growing Royal Navy that will be designed to maximise exports and be attractive to navies around the world”.
He told the BBC on Wednesday morning: “We’ve not exported a new warship in this country for 40 years. We have to get back to making things.”
Unless the U.S. Department of Defense is simply incapable of cross allied procurement learning, there is an obvious opportunity to leverage what the UK and Australia are doing to build a new class of frigates and destroyers.
2017-09-06 The US and allied militaries are working a significant military transformation.
This transformation is being driven in part by the shift from engaging in slo mo war to preparing for high intensity and high tempo operations.
In many ways, the two key regions where this transformation is being ramped up is the defense of the North Atlantic and in the Western Pacific.
We have launched a Second Line of Defense Forum looking at the question: How will the US and the allies meet the challenge of shifting from slo-mo to high intensity combat operations?
And next year the Williams Foundation will hold two seminar addressing the general challenge and specific capabilities which need to be shaped to make this shift.
High-intensity warfare is characterized by rapidly evolving, high-lethality, multi-domain operations.
The skills, tactics, procedures, and the level of force integration required for successfully conducting such operations will challenge the generation of officers who have come to maturity fighting in counter-insurgencies.
ATLANTIC OCEAN (Aug. 5, 2017) An F/A-18E Super Hornet attached to the “Tomcatters” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 31, bottom, and an F/A-18F Super Hornet attached to the “Blacklions” of VFA-213 fly in formation above the HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) during exercise Saxon Warrior 2017, One aspect of shaping the kill web will be flying with an all fifth generation carrier (the Queen Elizabeth) with large deck US carriers which carry a mixed 4th/5th gen force and with the new USS America which will fly F-35s as its strike aircraft.
It is a culture shift; it is a platform shift; it is an acquisition shift; it is an exercise shift.
In the event of a high intensity war breaking out, mobilization is a critical capability.
This means that in preparing for the prospect of high intensity war, a premium is placed on planning, establishing and meeting the requirements for the U.S. and allied industrial base to surge war winning platforms and weapons to the fight.
How will the US and the allies make these shifts, and to take the force we have and make it more high intensity combat ready and ensure that modernization going ahead enhances the capability to engage in and win high intensity conflict?
This special report looks at an aspect of this shift, namely crafting the maritime forces to be able to operate in and execute a kill web, rather than to operate in a legacy kill chain.
Airpower and naval power emerged from World War II as integrated components able to fight in a single battlespace.
For the navies, carrier aviation was the key element for air enablement along with land based air which could operate from key land based choke points to provide for key capabilities to assist in controlling the sea lines of communication.
With the emergence of fifth generation aviation, the manned-unmanned dynamic and the evolution of weapons, a new version of operating in the integrated battlespace is emerging.
The US Navy refers to this as the kill web, a capability to move from a linear kill chain to a distributed fleet able to tap into capabilities available throughout an integrated force.
This special report looks at the emergence of the kill web from the perspective of the maritime and air forces.
We first look at some conceptual issues in terms of how to characterize the way ahead for the fleet as it integrates with land and sea based capabilities to deliver its combat effect.
A key element of the change is shaping a more distributed C2 structure with a mission command approach, rather than the kind of hierarchical structure which can be used in slo mo war.
The shift from the kinds of land wars fought in the past decade and a half to operating across the range of military operations to insert force and to prevail in a more rapid tempo conflict than that which characterized counter-insurgency operations carries with it a need to have a very different C2 structure and technologies to support those structures.
The shift to higher tempo operations is being accompanied by platforms which are capable of operating in an extended battlespace and at the edge of the battlespace where hierarchical, detailed control simply does not correlate with the realities of either combat requirements or of technology which is part of a shift to distributed operations.
Distributed operations over an extended battlespace to deal with a range of military operations require distributed C2; not hierarchical detailed micro management.
In effect, the focus is upon shaping the commander’s intent and allowing the combat forces to execute that intent, and to shape evolving missions in the operations, with the higher level commanders working to gain an overview on the operations, rather than micro-management of the operations.
Unfortunately, the relatively slow pace of COIN, and the use of remotes (UAVs or RPAs) in the past decade have led to a growing practice of growing the level of command in order to try to exercise more detailed control. This has led to the current situation in the air operations against ISIS where you have more members of the CAOC than you have actual air strikes!
According to one of the architects of Desert Storm, Lt. General (David) Deptula, the CAOC for Desert Storm was quite lean, and the goal was to get the taskings into the hands of the warfighters to execute, with a later battle damage assessment process then informing decisions on the follow on target list.
It was not about micro managing the combat assets.
And this was with air power multi-mission assets, which went out to execute a command directive in a particular area of the battlespace to deliver a particular type and quantity of ordinance in that area of the battlespace.
With new air technologies, multi-tasking platforms will fly to the fight and execute the initial commander’s intent but will shift to the mission as needs arise during the air combat operation.
Fleeting targets are a key reality, which requires the ability for the pilots to prosecute those targets in a timely manner, rather than a deliberate C2 overview manner.
USMC F-35Bs fly with USAF strategic bombers and South Korean F-15Ks during a 10-hour mission from Andersen Air Force Base, into Japanese airspace and over the Korean Peninsula, August 30th. This mission was conducted in direct response to North Korea’s intermediate-range ballistic missile launch, which flew directly over northern Japan on August 28 amid rising tension over North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile development programs. (Photo by Republic of Korea Air Force). The F-35Bs could come from a fixed airfield, an airfield dispersed in an island chain or launched from a ship. That is the advantage of flying an F-35B in the age of the kill web.
Put in other terms, the command structures will need to “lean out” and to work with warfighting assets where the pilots and operational decision makers are at the point of engagement, not in a building housing a CAOC.
This requires building in a new approach to C2 from the ground up as the new assets are introduced into the force. For example, the introduction of the F-35 should bring with it a fundamental rethink away from hub-and-spoke C2 to distributed C2 and modular force package operating forces.
C2 for fifth generation aircraft is about setting the broader combat tasks and unleashing them to the engagement area, and once there they can evaluate the evolving situation during their engagement time and decide how best to execute the shifting missions within the context of the overall commander’s intent.
Hierarchical command and control of the sort being generated by today’s CAOCs is asymmetrical with the trend of technology associated with fifth generation warfare.
The emerging perspective which can be characterized as a kill web, or the “network as a weapon” or a “fifth generation enabled force” can be encapsulated in the following graphic, which reflects the convergent lines of transformation shaping a foundation for the next decade of change.
We next look at the emergence of key elements of the kill web entering service with today’s US Navy, USMC, the RAF and the Royal Navy, and the RAAF and the Royal Australian Navy.
Our visits to FALLON, MAWTS-1, to the UK and to Australia provided several data points on how the U.S. and core allies are working on building out a kill web air enabled force.
We then look at the significant opportunities, which new training and development integration can provide to shape a more integrated force able to execute a kill web going forward.
Finally, we then address two case studies of the way ahead: working the unmanned-manned transition and the electronic warfare or the non-kinetic payload domain.
And we conclude with some thoughts from the newly appointed Air Commander Australia on the challenge of shaping an effective 21st century combat force.
And to put this into a very real world context, new aviation assets are being morphed into a more effective maritime combat force.
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As Admiral Swift has recently noted with regard to the current Korean situation:
The U.S. would continue deploying heavy firepower to the region, including “carrier strike groups, expeditionary strike groups, AEGIS ships, the world’s most capable submarine force and advanced aircraft like the F-35, P-8 and MH-60R..
“Let our potential adversaries take pause and note that the only naval force more powerful than the U.S. Pacific Fleet is the entirety of the United States Navy.”
Editor’s Note: The slideshow above shows the CNO visiting Pax River earlier this year and focusing on the new high end aviation assets entering the fleet and which will be key players in the build out of a kill web enabled force.
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Col. Charles B. DeBellevue, USAF, Ret., a member of the famed “Triple Nickel” 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron during the Vietnam War, is credited with downing six North Vietnamese MiGs. Here is seen as one of the honored guests Memorial Day 2010 in Columbia Mo.
General Hawk Carlisle, commander, Air Forces Pacific sits with AFN-Pacific Hawaii News Bureau, to get the general’s thoughts and messages on the state of Air Forces in the Pacific. Credit: Defense Media Activity, Hawaii News Bureau, 4/613
HMS Queen Elizabeth, the UK’s new aircraft carrier, which was block built around the country. Credit: UK MoD
How the new Type 31e frigates might look. Credit: Daily Telegraph
ATLANTIC OCEAN (Aug. 5, 2017) An F/A-18E Super Hornet attached to the “Tomcatters” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 31, bottom, and an F/A-18F Super Hornet attached to the “Blacklions” of VFA-213 fly in formation above the HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) during exercise Saxon Warrior 2017, One aspect of shaping the kill web will be flying with an all fifth generation carrier (the Queen Elizabeth) with large deck US carriers which carry a mixed 4th/5th gen force and with the new USS America which will fly F-35s as its strike aircraft.
USMC F-35Bs fly with USAF strategic bombers and South Korean F-15Ks during a 10-hour mission from Andersen Air Force Base, into Japanese airspace and over the Korean Peninsula, August 30th. This mission was conducted in direct response to North Korea’s intermediate-range ballistic missile launch, which flew directly over northern Japan on August 28 amid rising tension over North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile development programs. (Photo by Republic of Korea Air Force). The F-35Bs could come from a fixed airfield, an airfield dispersed in an island chain or launched from a ship. That is the advantage of flying an F-35B in the age of the kill web.
