I'm not even mad, that's impressive hiding the readiness salami

So I happened to see this over at USNI.

Navy's Infamous INSURV Reports Set to End This Year Unless Congress Acts - USNI News

Somewhere a Navy legislative affairs officer (I am  not sure what their official title is) is groaning. 

About what you say? this little thing called INSURV. 

For those not familiar this is the drill Sergeant white glove inspection for surface ships. 

While you might pass it, you never get a perfect score  and failure is a real and terrifying option. 

Failure often but not always gets skippers fired.  Just depends on how bad big navy made readiness availabilities. 

If your ship was skipped for like 10 years you might get a pass

In any case what INSURV does do it give everybody whom can read it a (theoretically ) clear snapshot of the material readiness of a grey hull bought and paid for by the taxpayers. 

It also can show you the results of delayed maintenance availabilities and extended deployments 

And it is really embarrassing for the navy to have many of its premier assets fail or not perform well.

So a little history (and I am going to date myself a bit here) of INSUV well back in my day driving grey hulls we had some degree of advance warning that we would have an insurv..I think it was about 6 months to a year.  And it was something that generated real fear. 

As  young Ensign hearing a LCDR XO talk about it was like hearing about the boogey monster and the apocalypse all rolled into one. And it was. 

The objective was to survive - although you knew they would find lots of things wrong and make you look fairly dumb. 

After all the inspectors at INSURV new their stuff well and all the tricks you as a grey hull would try to use to make you look better. They were back in my day terminal O-5's and above whom gave no thought of delivering devastating reports. Because it a ship was jacked up then sailors might die because systems either did not work or sailors did not know how to operate them. 

I would love to read the INSURV reports for McCain and Fitzgerald prior to their respective collisions.

Broadside cartoon below says its all.

In any case the old advance notice gave us all the time in the world to essentially game the inspection. In fact if you did fail, you had very little excuse. This is not to say it would be pretty.

The games that were played...missing something - go borrow it from another ship and return it the day after inspection. Don't have someone whom can do x y or z ditto.

At some point in time they reduced the advance warning from months to weeks. Which makes it a lot harder to game the system, and the inspection as well as produce more accurate realistic assessment of the material condition and readiness of a grey hull. 

In short I am all for it.

But for big navy (Washington DC Navy) this is not good.

Which means in rough terms if our grey hulls were getting say A and B grades under the old system, they are now getting Cs D's and F's. 

The reports have long been a headache for the Navy because they often paint an unfavorable picture of the fleet’s readiness. The assessment for FY 2020 – unveiled last week – found that ship readiness decreased in the last three years. A string of negative INSURV reports prompted the Navy to classify the assessments in 2008, but the service later began producing unclassified versions of the reports.

In short the report card being generated is not very good. So what do you do when your report card sucks, well lets just eliminate the  report card. That way mom and dad (in these case Congress) won't know you failed and take away the car keys and your Xbox.

That they classified it, i am on the fence about that one. I am not sure what we are protecting when our ships go out looking like this. I think its pretty clear that there is likely alot of things broken on this ship. 

So it looks like (no clue whom did it) some legislative affairs staffer snuck a provision into the 2019 that 

While INSURV has existed for 139 years for the purpose of examining the service’s ships, Congress included a provision in the Fiscal Year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act stipulating that a report would no longer be required after Oct. 1, 2021 

I am guessing that enterprising staff officer go an EP out of that. However, and thankfully it looks like the gig is up as another enterprising member of some congressional staff discovered the shenanigans and plans to make sure mom and dad get their report card. 

So I guess its 

Readiness Issues anyone...

 2020-INSURV-ANNUAL-REPORT.PDF (defense.gov)

Laugh or Cry part 2

 Really don't know what to think of this:

With the submarine threat on the rise, the US Navy looks to autonomous water sensor drones (defensenews.com)

"The drone would need to be able to operate for 90 days at a time, dive to depths of up to 200 meters – or 657 feet – and take a sample every 2 seconds, according to documents posted to Naval Information Warfare Systems Command’s website"

"The Navy wants the drone to be able to loiter at depth or on the bottom, be able to transmit data when it surfaces via iridium satellite or a line-of-site datalink and be recoverable by either a survey ship or a vessel of opportunity"

 These specs are like 2000's era specs. In short orgs like Woods Hole and MBARI (Monterey) and Scripts have been using slocum gliders since about that time .

I mean I did an open marker survey while attached to a foreign navy back in 2003-2005 and you would think that people at Naval Information Warfare Systems Command would do the same before putting this out. 

There is literally no need to develop this. It was developed something like 20 years ago and operational 15 years ago 

See this article from 2008..so we seem to be issuing an RFP for tech this is over 15 years old and can be purchased of the shelf picture below is from 2012 when we lost one near Bermuda

Unidentified Floating Object In Bermuda's Waters - Bernews

Xconomy: Bluefin Sells Sub to Horizon Marine, Competes with iRobot for Big Navy Contract

"Bluefin, a 1997 spinoff of the AUV Laboratory at MIT’s Sea Grant College Program, licenses the technology behind the Spray Glider from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography "

"in the course of a single mission, the Spray Glider can dive and ascend 800 times, going as deep as 1,500 meters and covering a total distance of 4,000 kilometers. Every time the vehicle surfaces, it uses GPS to get a fix on its position, and sends the data it’s collected back to controllers via an Iridium satellite phone connection. (The Seaglider and the Slocum Glider function much the same way; all three vehicles were developed in response to an Office of Naval Research challenge to the scientific community about 10 years ago to build an “autonomous ocean sampling network.”)

"Bluefin has been manufacturing the Spray Glider for oceanographic research organizations and military agencies since 2004. But the Horizon deal marks the first time that Bluefin has supplied the craft to a commercial client. “The contract is important to us in that it’s really the first time that the oil and gas industry has come to look at this platform,” says Jeff Smith, Bluefin’s director of programs. “Traditionally this has been an academic research vehicle. The Navy has recently looked at using it for data collection to give advantage to the warfighter, and now with this Horizon Marine contract we’re seeing it in real-time applications for commercial oil and gas exploration.”

Smith couldn’t divulge the size of the contract, but he says that each Spray Glider vehicle costs about $100,000 when fully equipped with conductivity, temperature, and depth sensors. (Which isn’t much when you compare it to the $30,000 per day it can cost to send out manned oceanographic survey ships.)"

Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, if you want I think I still have my market survey on an old thumb drive...happy to give it to you as a starting point:) 

or ask purdue university:

Agile underwater glider could quietly survey the seas - Purdue University News

Place-trading AUVs designed for longer oceanographic missions (newatlas.com)

looks like l-3/harris is going to get a contract soon :) The requirements seem tailor made  

L3Harris’ IVER AUV: Multi-Mission Capability (defensenews.com)

A scenario that upends conventional wisdom

 

Could this happen....This piece was put together back in 2012. The technology has only improved since then. While this is an alternative analysis of possibilities in the PACOM area. this article brought my memories back

But before that some recent articles....

 China’s underwater drones seized in Indonesia expose tech, routes and potential submarine plans | South China Morning Post (scmp.com)

and this

China Enters the UUV Fray – The Diplomat

"HSU001 is a Large Displacement UUV (LDUUV), roughly analogous to the U.S. Navy’s own LDUUV, “Snakehead,” which is designed for missions such as intelligence preparation of the environment (IPOE) and anti-submarine warfare (ASW). At approximately 7 meters long, it is less than half the size of “Orca,” the U.S. Navy’s Extra Large UUV (XLUUV) which will be pier launched and is designed for complex, long-distance missions, including the delivery of specialized payloads such as mines, seabed sensors, and small UUVs. While HSU001 lacks the capacity for such large-scale payload integration, it may be capable of deploying micro UUVs or other sensors, or carrying payloads via external hardpoints. While it lacks adequate energy stores to transit thousands of nautical miles like Orca, it will likely be capable of long-endurance missions lasting several weeks to several months"

The Great Underwater Wall Of Robots: Chinese Exhibit Shows Off Sea Drones | Popular Science (popsci.com)

And the below is the fictionalized story that preceded a research paper on AUV/UUV's.

written about a decade ago...and yes It could happen

The Stennis Carrier Strike Group (CSG) had been tasked to deploy to the South China Sea in order to demonstrate the U.S resolve regarding Taiwan. The new leadership in Taiwan had recently begun the political maneuverings necessary to put a vote of independence towards the Taiwanese electorate. The result was that the People Republic of China had issued veiled threats. 

This had resulted in the Stennis CSG deployment. By December 2022 such deployments had 50 years of history and had become routine. 

As the CSG approached the South China Sea it was steaming at condition III. In this state roughly thirty percent of the crew would be on watch. From this condition it would be possible to rapidly transition to either condition II, a variant of General Quarters or to General Quarters itself.

During the extensive work ups to prepare for deployment the officers and crews of the Stennis CSG had focused primarily on the Air Warfare. In particular, the CSG trained extensively to the Air threat posed from the Shi Lang 1 (formerly the Russian Varyag). 

However, the CSG also trained extensively against the threat posed by China's long range Anti-Ship missiles.

The first threat, the Shi Lang had recently left homeport and commenced flight operations in the South China Sea. For the later threat, PACOM commanders had been wringing their hands since these missiles had first reached initial operational capability in late 2012 . There would be three more  carriers either operational or in the water by 2021. While the CSG commander was prepared for both - he had a nagging worry. The training and workups had been so Air Warfare centric threats that Undersea Warfare training had suffered

Several hours before sunrise an order was transmitted via a recently launched Chinese commercial satellite that ostensibly beamed Chinese language programming to Chinese viewers on mainland China. The signal reached a communications buoy that surfaced every three hours

From there, the order was relayed to the vast undersea network before ultimately reaching a swarm of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles. 

These vehicles had been deployed by the air  a week ago using a means similar to the Snowflake Air Deployment Systems developed at the United States Naval Post Graduate School in the late 2000’s. 

Since that time they had been positioning themselves in the path of the CSG by relying on cueing from the distributed remote sensing, mobile underwater networks and more conventional sensing networks employed by China. Much in the same way German U boat packs were able to position themselves in the way of Allied convoys based on intelligence and Airborne sightings in WW II

The swarm began to close on the CSG undetected by the CSG's equipment. They were just too quiet.

Just before sunrise, the AEGIS class Guided Missile Destroyer USS Preble suffered catastrophic damage at frame amidships. Ten minutes later, despite the best damage control efforts, she rolled over and sunk. 

Nearly simultaneously her sisters USS Decatur and USS Howard were similarly damaged. 

The two remaining destroyers and their much vaunted AEGIS weapons systems were off line or effectively destroyed. 

The result was catastrophic for the CSG. The Aircraft Carrier Stennis, was now essentially defenseless from a coordinated air attack with her AEGIS escorts offline and fighting to stay afloat

The scene above was witnessed, fathoms underwater, by one of the many tethered listening devices. It evaluated the reduced signature to noise ratio and the sound of the USS Preble breaking up. Its primitive logic commanded it to surface and transmit a brief message to PRC Naval HQ. 

This message confirmed to PRC leadership that USS Stennis was now deprived of its Air Defense Umbrella. 

With the escorts intact the probability of hit - and kill – by Anti Ship Cruise Missiles had been evaluated as marginal. 

With the escorts removed from the equation the Carrier that equation was drastically changed and the CSG was far more vulnerable to attack from surface and land launched Anti-Ship Missiles.

Approximately thirty minutes later the first land based Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles homed in on the USS Stennis. 

The distributed underwater surveillance system, and associated systems provided Over the Horizon Targeting. 

This attack resulted in the USS Stennis suffering what would be termed catastrophic mission kill. 

Her flight deck was holed; aircraft on fire and vital communications systems were off line. While the carrier would stay afloat the damages would take months in a dedicated repair yard.

However, she would not get that chance. As she steamed slowly east she and her remaining escorts, were struck by a group of Houbei Fast Attack Craft (FAC) 4 . 

Each of these craft fired an initial shoot shoot look salvo of 4 YJ-83 Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles from standoff range at the now defenseless carrier. 

Minutes later the same ships fired their remaining 4 missiles and quickly turned changed course at high speed to return to their homeport

This day in December 2022 would be the worst loss the U.S. Navy had experienced in decades. Deprived of the protection of the U.S CSG Taiwan was unable to repel combined Air and Sea attack by the PRC two days later.  And the US was unable to surge assets to support

The PRC quickly gained full control of that country and the promise of U.S. protection was severely tarnished the world over. 

More importantly, China had always been viewed as a land power however China had now demonstrated the capacity to deny the much vaunted U.S Military access to most of the PACOM area of operations and established herself as the de-facto maritime power in the South China Sea.

from MBARI 

from 

The Great Underwater Wall Of Robots: Chinese Exhibit Shows Off Sea Drones | Popular Science (popsci.com)

Below is the research that backed the paper up...wont bore you with the actual paper as it would probably need a bunch of updating given the advances in battery and communications tech in the last decade

WWW.StrategyPage.com. Shi Lang Gets Flight Deck Traffic. http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htnavai/articles/20120308.aspxAccessed March 8th 2012

 Aviation Week. China Details Anti-Ship Missile Plans. Published July 19 2011. Accessed 21 March 2011. http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/genericstory/story_genersic.jsp?channel=awst&id=news/awst/2011/07/18/AW_0 7_18_2011_p24-347899.xm

Tyree, Michael G. Initial design and Concept of operations for a clandestine data relay UUV to circumvent jungle canopy effects on satellite communications. Thesis . Naval Post Graduate School. September 2011. Pg 23 1 www.sinodefense.com. Type 022 (Houbei Class) Fast Attack Missile Craft. http://www.sinodefence.com/navy/littoral/type022.asp. Last updated March 2009. Retrieved 04 April 2012

Hickly, Mathew. The uninvited guest: Chinese sub pops up in middle of U.S. Navy exercise, leaving military chiefs red-faced. Mail Online. Published Nov 2007. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-492804/The-uninvitedguest-Chinese-sub-pops-middle-U-S-Navy-exercise-leaving-military-chiefs-red-faced.html Accessed 04 April 2012

Eshel, David . Hanit Suffers Iranian Missile Attack. Defense Update. http://defense-update.com/2006/07/inshanit-suffers-iranian-missile.html. July 2006. Retrieved 09 April 2012.

Lynam, Joe. 'North Korean torpedo' sank South's navy ship – report. BBC News Online. 20 May 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10129703. Retrieved 09 April 2012

 Associated Press. Pakistani officials: Drone strike kills 12. Published March 9th, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.nwherald.com/2012/03/09/pakistani-officials-drone-strike-kills-12/a6kqazy. 11 March 2012

Al-Rodaini, Fatik. US drone strikes kill 25 militants in Yemen. Biykamasar. Published 10 March 2012. Retrieved from. http://bikyamasr.com/61259/us-drone-strikes-kill-25-militants-in-yemen.11 March 2012

Shoalwater, Stephanie. Commentary: The Legal Status of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles. Marine Technology Society Journal. Spring 2004. PG 80.

 Yan, Hai; Wan, Lei; Zhou Shengli; Shi, Zhijie; Cui, Jun-Hong, Huang, Jie and Zhou, Hao. DSP based receiver implementation for OFDM acoustic modems. Physical Communication. 09 September 2011. Available at www.elsevier.com/locate/phycom

Cui, Rongzin; Ge Sam Shuzhi; How, Bernard Voon; Choo, Yoo Sang. Leader-Follower formation control of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles. Ocean Engineering. 21 July 2010. Available at at www.elsevier.com/locate/oceaneng

Li, Deyang; Li, Zheng; Ma, Wenkai; Chen, Hong; and Chen, Wenping. Constrained surface -level placement for underwater acoustic wireless sensor networks. Theoretical Computer Science. 10 September 2009. Available at at www.elsevier.com/locate/oceaneng

Li, Changlong; Xicheng, Feng; Li, Yiping and Liu, Kaizhou. Toward and Generalized Architecture for Unmanned Underwater Vehicles. 2011 IEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Shanghai International Conference Center. Shanghai, China. May 9- 13, 2011. Shanghai China

Tang, Minqiang; Zhang, Zhiqiang and Xing, Yuqing. Analysis of New Developments and Key Technologies of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle in Marine Survey. Procedia Environmental Sciences. October 2011. Available at www.sciencedirect.com

Yan, Hai; Wan, Lei; Zhou Shengli; Shi, Zhijie; Cui, Jun-Hong, Huang, Jie and Zhou, Hao. DSP based receiver implementation for OFDM acoustic modems. Physical Communication. 09 September 2011. Available at www.elsevier.com/locate/phycom

Che, Xianhui; Wells, Ian, Dickers, Gorden and Kear, Paul. TDMA frame design for a prototype underwater RF communication network. Ad Hoc Networks. 02 July 2011. available at : www.elsevier.com/locate/adhoc

Nicholson, J.W. CAPT USN and Healy, A.J. The Present State of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Applications and Technologies. Marine Technology Society Journal. Spring 2009. PG 44.

MBARI.org. Powerpoint Titled. Components of UPS. http://www.mbari.org/MB2006/UPS/mb2006-ups-links.htm retrieved 04 April 2012

Akyildiz, Ian ; Pompili, Dario and Melodia, Tommaso. Challenges for Efficient Communication in Underwater Accoustic Sensor Networks. Georgia Institute of Technology. School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Page 4

Che, Xianhui; Wells, Ian and Kear, Paul. TDMA frame design for a prototype underwater RF communication network. AD HOC Networks. July 2011. Available at www.elsevier.com/locate/adhoc, Page 3

Guerra, Federico ; Casari Paolo; Berni, Alessandro and Potter, John. Performance Evaluation of Random and Handshake based Channel Access in Collaborative Underwater Networks. NATO Undersea Research Center and University of Padova. Italy

Sarisaray-Boluk, P ; Gungor, VC; Baydere S. and Harmanci, AE. Quality aware image transmission over Underwater Multimedia Sensor Networks. Ad Hoc Networks. 2011. www.elsevier.com/locate/adhoc

Li, Deying; Li, Zheng; Ma, Wenkai; Chen, Hong and Chen, Wenping. Constrained surface-level gateway placement for underwater acoustic wireless networks. Theoretical Computer Science . 2011. www.elsevier.com/locate/tcs

 Yan, Hai; Wan, Lei; Zhou, Shengli; Shi, Zhijie; Cui, Jun-Hong; Huang, Jie and Zhou, Hao. DSP (Digital Signal Processing) based receiver implementation for ODFM (orthongal frequency division multiplexing) acoustic modems. Physical Communication. 2011. www.elsevier.com/locate/phycom

Marani, Giacomo; Choi, Song K and Yuh, Junku. Underwater Autonomous manipulation for intervention missions AUV. Ocean Engineering. 17 August 2008. Available at www.elsevier.com/locate/oceaneng.

Park, Jin-Yeong; Jun, Bong-huan; Lee, Pan-mook and Oh, Junho. Experiments on vision guided docking of an autonomous underwater vehicle using one camera. Ocean Engineering. 29 October 2009. Available at www.elsevier.com/locate/oceaneng. PG 4

Yakimenko, Oleg A; Horner, Douglas P. and Pratt, Douglas. AUV Rendevous Trajectories for Underwater Recovery. Congress Center. Ajaccio France. 2005. Pg 1194

Wilmath, Kim. USF underwater robot takes to Twitter. Tampa Bay Times. March 29 2012

Carvalhosa, Sergio Alexandre Carraca. Cooperative Motion Control of Multiple Autonomous Robotic Vehicles. Collision Avoidance in Dynamic Environments. Thesis for Masters in Electrical Engineering. University of Lisbon. Instituto Superior Techico. October 2009. Pg 3 and 44.

Brown, Hunter; Jenkins, Liza; Meadows, Guy and Schuchman, Robert. Bathyboat: An Autonomous Surface Vessel for Stand Alone Survey and Underwater Vehicle Network Supervision. Marine Technology Society Journal. July 2010 1 Freeman, D.K. Remote Delivery of Unmanned Systems Technologies. Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City

Loberg, Jon-Erik. Planar Docking Algorithms for Underactuated Marine Vehicles. Masters Thesis. Norwegian University of Science and Technology. June 2010.

Brown, Hunter; Jenkins, Liza; Meadows, Guy and Schuchman, Robert. Bathyboat: An Autonomous Surface Vessel for Stand Alone Survey and Underwater Vehicle Network Supervision. Marine Technology Society Journal. July 2010

Chapple, Philip. Unsupervised Detection of Mine Like Objects in Seabed Imagery from Autonomous Underwater Vehicles. Defense Science and Technology Organization. Sydney, Austrialia. P 1

 Frenzel, James; Fazzari, Kyle and Edwards, Dean. Sharing Clearance Data between Multiple Autonomous Platforms. Center For Intelligent Systems Research . University of Idaho

Chitre, Mandar. Teamwork among AUV’s. AUV Sensors and Systems Workshop. November 2010.

Kemp, Mathieu; Bertozzi, Andrea and Merthaler, Daniel. Multi-UUV Perimeter Surveillance. Army Research Office. July 2004

Akkaya, Kemal and Newell, Andrew. Self Deployment of Sensors for Maximized coverage in underwater acoustic sensor networks. University of Southern Illinois Carbondale. April 2009. Available at www.elsevier/com/locate/comcom

Incze, Michael. Optimized Deployment of autonomous underwater vehicles for charachterization of coastal waters. Journal of Marine Systems. 28 Feb 2009. Available at www.elsevier.com/locate/jmarsys. Pg S416

Hasvold, Oistein; Lian, Torleif; Haakaas, Erik; Storkersen, Nils; Perelman, Olivier and Cordier, Stephane. CLIPPER: A long range, Autonomous underwater vehicle using magnesium fuel and oxygen from the sea. Journal of Power Surces. 2004. Available at www.sciencedirect.com

 Hasvold, Oistein; Lian, Torleif; Storkersen, Nils and Forseth, Sissel. Power Sources for aoutnomous underwater vehicles. Journal of Power Sources. 2006. Available at www.sciencedirect.com

Back to the future .....modern cargo carrying clipper ships?

 Well this is a bit interesting

Michelin Commits to Shipping Product Transatlantic on Sail Cargo Ship (maritime-executive.com)

""NEOLINE's plan calls for the construction of two 446-foot long vessels that will get their main power from 4200 m2 of sails. Relying on wind as the main propulsion for its cargo ships, NEOLINE is promoting its services to shippers offering a 90 percent reduction in CO2 emissions related to transatlantic maritime freight transport"

Did some quick research as 4200 m2 of sails sounds like a lot. 

"Star Clippers claims that she is the largest "true sailing ship" built since Preussen. She is listed in Guinness World Records as the largest square-rigged ship in service, with 5,202 square metres (55,990 sq ft) of sail. Her sails can be handled with a crew as small as twenty using powered controls.^[2]"

came from the design of the Preussen built in 1902. 

"Five-Masted Full Rigger

These were the most impressive of all the clipper ships and were very impressive. In 1902, Preussen graced the seas as the largest sailing ship ever to be built and served the purpose of serving the nitrate trade from Chile to Germany. They were built with five masts and square sails on each of them – providing a total sail area of 6,800 square metres. The Royal Clipper was inspired by Preussen and, upon completion in 2000, became the largest clipper ship ever "

Length:

482 ft (147 m) (overall) 439.6 ft (134.0 m) (hull) 400.3 ft (122.0 m) (btw. perpendiculars

"The sturdily built ship could weather nearly any storm and even tack in force 9 winds. In such conditions eight men had to hold the 6 1⁄2-foot-tall double steering wheel. She was successfully used in the saltpeter trade between Germany and Chile, setting speed records in the process. Under good conditions, the ship could reach a speed of 20 knots (37 km/h). Her best 24-hour runs were 392 nm in 1908 on her voyage to Japan and 426 nm in 1904 in the South Pacific. Due to her appearance, uniqueness, and excellent sailing characteristics sailors called her the “Queen of the Queens of the Seas”. In early 1903, she sailed an unequalled record voyage from Lizard Point to Iquique in 57 days.

In 1910, just 8 years after her launch, she sunk in the English Channel due to damage from a collision with a small cross-channel steamer, ‘Brighton‘. Contrary to regulations, Brighton had tried to cross her bows, underestimating her high speed of 16 knots. Legend has it the skipper said: “a sailboat can’t go that fast” – after which the two collided. The Master of Brighton was found to be responsible for the accident and lost his licence as a result."

Will be interesting to see how this works out for NEOLINE and the Michelin Group 

Can we walk and chew bubblegum at the same time?

 

Regretfully, I have to agree with the general assessment of this piece 

"The Navy’s performance in developing new surface combatants is at a low ebb. The Navy began the century by unveiling three new classes of surface combatants. All three programs went awry, producing almost no gain in warfighting capability"

Four Reasons The Navy’s Bold Plans For Its Surface Fleet Are Doomed In The Biden Era (forbes.com)

There is a bit of good news. James F. “Hondo” Geurts is "PTDO (performing the duties of) under secretary of the Navy.

New PTDO Under Secretary of the Navy Designated - Seapower (seapowermagazine.org)

Why is this good?

"Geurts previously served as the acquisition executive, U.S. Special Operations Command, at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, where he was responsible for all special operations forces acquisition, technology and logistics"

For those that don't know, while Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is a Combatant Command (COCOM) they also have the ability and authority to buy stuff. 

There is a pretty well established and functional Requirements to Capability Cycle there. 

And pretty quick flash to bang. Talking Urgent Needs Statement from an O-3 validated by an O-6 in the field to a delivered capability in a year sometimes less. 

And that organization also still does things like utilizing the Department of Defense Architectural Framework  (DODAF) to ensure that there is traceability from the requirements document to actual capability delivery. 

Yes DODAF can be painful and slow, if you don't have the warfighter, requirements developer and Architects in the same room. 

Sometimes the warfighter wants things that are not possible. I would love to design a Ray gun for the warfighter, but that is probably not technologically feasible s the Technology Readiness level is just not there. 

This cartoon pretty much encapsulates what happens when the people whom are going to use something have little input into design. And those designing it have little understanding of those whom are going to use it. See cartoon below. 

 

But if you do have the warfighter, requirements developer and Architects in the same room through the entire process it can go pretty quick, as in months vice years. 

Its been a while since I was doing Navy Centric DODAF stuff but back then in the 2010's we didn't do it as well as we could. As it was to hard and required to much effort

Had the Navy stuck with that process rather than gutting the DODAF shop and going all transformational in the 2000's and 2010's we might have avoided the LCS nonsense and the issues the Ford is having.

Since the slice of the pie is going to get smaller perhaps Mr Geurts will be able to determine which projects really need to be thrown out as they are not tied to any CONOPS.

Time will tell...

That being said, back in the 2010's I was working as a contractor on a Navy centric project. 

Although the project had been defunded their was still funding mechanisms for that project. The output of the work was pretty much identical to a new project. So we did the work and re-purposed it. 

It was a little intellectually dishonest. But we were able to use much of the old work to advance the new work.

Somewhere we have a lot of ROC/POE  Required Operational Capabilities/ Projected Operational Environment  documents sitting in file cabinets and a fair degree of preliminary work done on lots of things we are interested in doing now.

Lets leverage that rather than re-inventing wheels

Ooh the old project CG(X) 

CG(X) - Wikipedia

the new one Flight 3 DDG. 

Arleigh Burke-Class Destroyer Flight III Progressing on Schedule > United States Navy > display-pressreleases

 With luck perhaps Mr Geurts will take the something old something new and rationalize acquisitions 

Common Sense prevails in the Wisconsin Badger move - own goal avoided

 

Looks like the Navy realized it was about to make an own goal...

Navy Pauses Plan to Move Wisconsin Badger to Virginia Museum | Military.com

But still had to be a little petty

"Berube told The Associated Press last week that he never saw the letter and seemed to resist the request, stating “a loan is a loan” and children in Norfolk would enjoy the statue as much as children in Wisconsin"

Come on now the Children of Norfolk have a full up on Battleship to visit

The State of Wisconsin has this 

Norfolk's children have this

maybe next time ready aim and determine not to fire.

Or maybe think things through. 

Things that make you go hmmm

 

Update on the U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship Program - Naval News

So much here in this article to unpack. The whole LCS thing is in my opinion a failed acquisition effort. To sum it up we have two classes of ships. Before doing so lets briefly review our little crappy ships that can't.

And to be clear this is no reflection on the sailors that serve on these platforms. Several years ago I had an opportunity to tour both classes of ships and talk to crew officer and enlisted. To a T they are proud of their ships but pride does not bring capability. 

So first up....

The Independent class 

About 400 feet long with basically an armaments of some 50 calibers, a 57mm gun which sounds great until you realize 57 mm is just a little more than two inches, like 2 1/4 inches and Hellfire missiles. 

Then you have the Freedom Class

about 350 feet long and same basic armaments as Independence class 

and now pretty much limited to about 10 knots due to a

"pointed to “a material defect” with the ship’s combining gear, a complex transmission that transmits power generated by the ship’s engines to its waterjet propulsion system, and said it is working to design a fix for in-service littoral combat ships while holding off on taking delivery on new ship"

Which means, given the failure of pretty much any of the "modules" that were supposed to make this platform a well armed jack of all trades depending on configuration you have got essentially a lemon.

And it appears the Navy is trying to make lemonade.. problem is these lemons are rotten.

But...Before I go on to what type of lemonade I wanted to show a few snapshots of what similarly sized warships from our peers and near peers are configured.  What we might have gotten had  a whole generation of leaders not drank the transformational cool aide. 

Besides vey questionable acquisitions also included minimal manning, perform to serve, multiple crews for one platform... ect

So first up the ruskies 

lets just start with the Steregushchy-class corvette 

Just about the same size as the Freedom Class except she packs a much bigger punch. Deck gun is going to range between 100 mm and 130 mm (the translates into 5 inches), also 12 VLS cells that can accommodate the Kalibr familly of missiles. Yes that fanilly of Kaliber that can be a ship killer or land attack cruise missiles with about 1000 mile range if OSINT is to be believed

next up China

Now lets look at China's Type 041 Frigate. Yes this is a bit of a poor comparison as she's larger 

Ok yes she is about 40 foot longer then the Independence class and about 9 feet longer than Freedom.  But she, like the Russian packs it in with a 100 mm main gun 32 VLS cells and some anti ship missiles

So now on to the rancid lemonade that I think the Navy is making. It sounds like they want the LCS to do mine warfare and replace PC's... This is a big mistake. 

Even the Navy appears to admit this. 

So I'm all for Unmanned Systems, but you have to have capable unmanned systems.  And oh by the way, once again we could do alot to learn from our Baltic and Nordic brethren whom have been doing mine warfare as a professional subsection of  surface warfare well for a long time.  

The below is the  Ensdorf Class Mine Sweeper  first came into service in the 1990's. That uses Unmanned Surface Vehicles to actively sweep for magnetic and pressure mines. Pretty cool..maybe we could like ask the Germans for assistance in scaling this to something that could fit aboard LCS?  And maybe ask the Norwegians about how to utilize AUV's? 

The USV's by the way came into service in the 1980s. 

But now we are basically going to get rid of our dedicated MCM in the form of the Avenger class and shove it all onto LCS..

Yes the Avenger's are getting long in the tooth and need to have a dedicated replacement..but tagging the LCS for this is not really smart. At least not right now..

Apparently, the reporter here got to get the unvarnished truth from an O-3  hope the O-3 was not taken out back by the woodshed.

"Now as far as LCS goes…to say that is it getting faster or more time consuming…  Today, it is clear and faster because we have [MCM] systems [that the LCS] didn’t have five years ago.  Five years into the future, we should have these [LCS MCM] systems, if managed correctly, that you can employ all at once"

.......

"So, for an Avenger that can detect and destroy a mine in four hours, it might take the LCS an entire day and that is because the LCS cannot do a single sortie to detect and engage and relies on unmanned systems"

By the way, I think the 4 hour mark is a little generous,  It can take days and or weeks  sometimes, I would say once you have positively identified a mine 4 hours is probably ok assuming nothing breaks 

Then same reporter got ahold of an O-4 whom may have been through JPME so the answer was a litttle more hedged but still damning 

“Bottom line: It’s expensive, the reasons being that some of these systems on the LCS Mission package have technologies that have not yet existed so we have to research and we have to look into these technologies and build them up and that cost money. I think that anything that is new and shiny is going to initially cost money.  And when the systems are in full production and fully fielded, it will drive down the cost, but for now it’s expensive and that is just the nature of Acquisitions in buying something new.”

We have literally been designing these MCM modules for over a decade, and we still can't seem to make it work. How about lets ask those countries that know how to do mine warfare vice trying to transformationalize our way to a newer way of mine warfare.

Mine warfare is not sexy and it is not easy, and the more effective ways to do it are decidedly low tech. Which Boils down to hunt when you can, sweep when you must accept risk at last resort...something that has not changed in several hundred years

Below is from “Damn the Torpedoes 99 0 . A Short History of U.S. Naval Mine Countermeasures, 1777-1991 by Tamara Moser Melia.

Its a great read and can be found here

DamnTorpedoesWhole.pdf (nps.edu)

and if you believe the Damn the Torpedoes myth your about to be disappointed. 

As Farragut literally hunted when he could swept when he had to and took risk when required against the mine warfare threat he faced

"Late Sunday night, on 31 July 1864, as one witness recalled it, Lieutenant John Crittenden Watson, Farragut’s flag lieutenant and personal friend, set out on a curious expedition to Mobile Bay. Heavily armed, Watson and his men rowed quietly into the bay with muffled oars. Unobserved by the enemy on this particular occasion, they proceeded with their nightly mission of examining a field of these moored Confederate contact mines blocking much of the entrance to Mobile Bay.

Although this foray through the mine lines is the best documented example of Watson’s minehunting activities, surviving ship deck logs and memoirs attest to his repeated attempts to gain information for Farragut on the extent of the mine danger zone. Watson took picket boats out from Farragut’s flagship, the sloop of war Hartford, on the nights of 30 June, 25 July, and 27 July; on 25 July he had been accompanied on an extended survey by boats from gunboat Sebago and sloop Monongahela.

  In his battle orders Farragut assured his fleet that the mine line had been thoroughly surveyed. “It being understood that there are torpedoes and other obstructions between the buoys, the vessels will take care to pass eastward of the easternmost buoy”; which he knew from Watson’s reconnaissance should be “clear of all obstructions. At high tide on the morning of 5 August Farragut entered the bay. Farragut’s officers had persuaded him to allow the sloop Brooklyn, hastily rigged with a rudimentary torpedo catcher on the bowsprit, to lead the advance in place of Farragut’s flagship, Hartford. Contrary to Farragut’s orders, monitor Tecumseh moved west of the red buoy where it struck and detonated one of the newly placed mines. As Tecumseh quickly went down, Brooklyn suddenly stopped and backed, stalling the fleet’s ad~ance.~ High in Hartford‘s rigging Farragut watched Tecumseh sink and Brooklyn hesitate. From Hurtford‘s poop deck Lieutenant Watson heard the admiral’s exchange with Brooklyn: “Farragut hailed again and all that could be distinguished of her reply was something about torpedoes. ‘Damn the torpedoes!’ he instantly shouted, ordering Hartford‘s captain ‘Full speed ahead, Drayton.”’ 

........

On 6 August Farragut issued a general order of thanks to his men for their conduct of the previous day. Unwittingly underplaying Watson’s efforts while exaggerating his own ignorance of the state of the mine defenses of the bay, Farragut claimed that of the mines he “knew nothing except the exaggerations of the enemy.”1° Some of Farragut’s officers later asserted that Watson’s minehunting efforts were far more extensive than even Farragut himself knew. “How far he entered the Bay on these occasions in the darkness of the night I doubt if the Admiral knew himself,” one man reported, although “he evidently was in close touch with the enemy.”” Confederates on the scene agreed that however they were discovered, Farragut knew exactly where the live mines were

Farragut’s daring in the face of enemy mines was real. Before the battle Farragut had decided to enter the bay whatever the obstacles. Confederate mine warfare had, however, been so successful in stalling the Union advance that by 1864 no captain in the Union Navy could afford to ignore the mine threat when attacking a fortified harbor. Watson’s efforts no doubt added to the failure rate of the mines, and the knowledge he gave Farragut of the extent and exact parameters of the mine threat influenced Farragut’s decision to take the risk. Farragut prepared to battle the mines as carefully as he prepared his vessels for the fight, gaining sufficient information about the condition of the minefield before him to make a dangerous yet measured decision. Farragut did not, as many assert, merely “damn” the mines at Mobile Bay but, rather, assiduously hunted, examined, and disabled them before steaming into the bay. His meticulous approach to the mine threat is a crucial lesson in risk assessment that, unfortunately, most contemporary observers missed

So to bring this back to full cycle using an LCS as Mine Warfare Asset is a bad idea unless you make it into a mine warfare asset as its primary mission. Not a module, Your also going to have to permanently embark MIW helos and and all that stuff. In short take USS Inchon and merge it with MCM -1. Im not sure how your are going to duplicate the the MIW disposal ability of the MCM ROV's but perhaps the UUV/AUV advances in the last several years have mitigated that.

Oh did you also read they are thinking about getting rid of PC's and giving that mission to LCS....

"RADM Paul Schlise said that the roles of the PCs will be replaced by the Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) and the smaller U.S. Coast Guard boats.  Schlise described the Coast Guard boats as platforms that work in both peace and wartime and having great capabilities that can make up for the retirement of the Patrol Coastals. This article will explore those options further below"

How about this...lets get rid of all the LCS's use the money in savings to buy replacement PC's and MCM's that work.

Lets admit that there are different types of knives and tools and while a swiss army knife has most of the implements you may need, your are not going to build a house are fix machinery well with one.

You need to invest in specialized tools.

ok friday rant complete

AUV /UUV outdone by our Nordic friends again

 

Was looking over at Naval news today and saw this:

Kongsberg Maritime Unveils New HUGIN Endurance AUV - Naval News

Once again, we need to probably take a few lessons from our Nordic allies. 

For those not familiar with underwater vehicles there is a bit of a terminology gap between the U.S Navy and our allies. In my opinion. 

Most of the European Countries refer to these vehicles as Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) while for some reason we in the U.S Navy refer to them as Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV). 

Regardless of the terminology (and some may argue about this) they are essentially the same thing. However, the technical approach and reasons for AUV/UUV development are also very different

For the U.S Navy we have tended to focus on the smaller end side of things Mainly REMUS  which is manufactured by Hydroid which is in turn an offshoot of a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute  project. 

Yes there is always RUMINT (rumor intelligence) about what the Submarine Community may or may not be doing (I honestly have no clue) to help augment some of their more sensitive missions Blind Mans Bluff stuff Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage: Sontag, Sherry, Drew, Christopher, Drew, Annette Lawrence: 9781610393584: Amazon.com: Books

But the conventional navy REMUS was an outgrowth of the expensive nature of having large very expensive crewed research ships going out and well doing research. So rather than send a large research ship out, you could pretty much rent a lobster boat, toss a REMUS unit out and let it do its thing. 

The basic civilian version generally has the following sensors:

Bathymetry

Temperture

Water Velocities

Salinity

Sound Speed

Optical Backscatter

Diver Visibility

Sidescan Sonar

Fluorescence

And you can add subtract sensors as long as they match the Size Weight Power limitations

Yes, early versions required USBL buoys for navigation if GPS was suboptimal, but better INS and nav systems have made this less of a a requirement 

For those whom don't know what a REMUS looks like see below 

And they come in several sizes, some are able to be man handled and others require specialized deployment gear.  

The basics are the bigger they are the farther they can go. 

Generally we have taken the approach to deploy these from smaller surface craft, with the exception of a very large UUV I believe that was manufactured by Bluefin  (I actually visited their manufacturing plant back about 15 years ago) we deployed on a trial basis from one of the LCS. 

Our friends across the Atlantic got into the AUV business for very different reasons, one of the biggest is to keep track of the sprawling underwater oil and gas infrastructure. Kongsberg Marine has been a big leader in this. 

And the Norwegian navy as early as 2004 had already integrated them on their Mine warfare ships. I actually got a chance to see it in action back then while doing an exchange tour with one of our allies.  It works and works well.

During OPEN SPRIT 2004 I was part of the planning cell that had to integrate these new technologies into actual real live mine clearance. For those that doen't know OPEN SPIRIT is a mine warfare operation (not exercise) that clears old mines and UXO from the Eastern Baltic.

In short in conjunction with standard MIW technologies these were a game changer. 

I have been out of the space for a while but back then the biggest issue was underwater comms and data rates, endurance and the need for really good automated classification of the incoming/recorded data. It was a 2:1 at the time. In short you needed twice the length of time of the mission to go through the data. But I understand comms and data rates have improved.  

This is especially true when integrating unmanned surface vehicles the improve data rates - think of a USV operating at the surface which the AUV can connect and download data.

And no its not science fiction the Europeans demonstrated that back in the mid 2000's

In short like many of the U.S Navy projects of the 2000's to very recently that bought into transformationalism (should be a 4 letter word) our allies were busy buying a little testing a little and learning a lot in the AUV section of the battlespace. 

Simply put they are way more advanced. 

We did sort of buy some knowledge when Hafmid the producer of Gavia  was purchased by teledynemarine. I still like the Gavia Platform the best as it is truly modular. However, is suffers from the not designed and made here issue. 

I always wonder if Gavia ever could make one of their modules a version of an underwater cluster bomb. 

So in short, it appears from my personal opinion we the U.S Navy got left behind as we focused on the CT missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Maybe if we are prepared to buy a FREMM hull we should be prepared to buy a Gavia or Hugin and improve on it.

Just my thoughts here...

update 

Poland's MoD procures additional Gavia AUVs - Naval News

The Gavia vehicles will mirror the AUVs previously delivered.  The new AUVs will be equipped with the latest EdgeTech 2205 side scan sonars (Edgetech, West Wareham, MA, USA) with a BlueView MB2250 Microbathymetry Module (Teledyne Reson, Denmark), providing simultaneous dual frequency 600 /1600 kHz EdgeTech 2205 side scan sonar with gapfill featured by the BlueView MB2250.  Inertial navigation will be provided by the PHINS C5 (iXblue, France) inertial navigation system (INS), aided by a 600kHz Pathfinder DVL (Teledyne RDI, CA, USA). Additionally, the AUVs will be equipped with Cnode modems (Kongsberg Maritime, Norway) for USBL tracking. 

With the imaging and navigation sensors listed above, the AUV will be able to gather high resolution, accurately navigated, sonar images while remaining submerged for several hours of continuous operation at survey speeds up to five knots. Each Gavia AUV will be delivered with several field-replaceable battery modules (Teledyne Energy Systems, USA).  The combination of sensors ensure that the Gavia AUV is ideal for mine countermeasures (MCM), as well as search and salvage operations, in continental-shelf waters and beyond.

Self Inflicted wound - Again

 Really have to wonder about the decision making process of the Navy some times. So back in 1988 the Navy gifted a kind of war trophy to the State of Wisconsin. 

The below was apparently made from Spanish cannons melted post Spanish American War and then mounted on the USS Wisconsin.  So apparently its a favorite of visitors whom are told the story which results in something the U.S Navy is seemingly short of - good PR. 

But maybe these days the Navy is a little sensitive about war trophies? I mean melting your adversaries cannons down to create a piece of art to mount on your battleship is probably the textbook definition.

Sensitive perhaps to war trophies?

Laywer: Forrest Sherman CO was fired for turning rusted AK-47 into war trophy for his ship (navytimes.com)

Perhaps if the skipper had just melted the AK-47 and turned it into some sort of artistic item he would have been relieved on time 

But really, is it really necessary to take this back....go it it was on loan. But at least give a better reason then its someone else's turn 

It’s Navy’s badger statue, but Wisconsin has grown attached (navytimes.com)

“Loans are done in good faith,” he said. “I think it’s great that children have been able to see this badger while it was on loan. Now we’re trying to accommodate another facility that has also requested it. There will be a lot of children in the Norfolk area who will be able to enjoy it as well.”

going to take a wild guess where its going

I think since they have the actual ship perhaps they can leave the decorative war trophy in Wisconsin

Another leadership flail by the surface Navy

 ‘People are scared’: COVID-19 outbreak rattles crew of the warship Chafee (navytimes.com)

Reading through this , it once again shows how we don't see, to know how to do basic leadership. 

Third Fleet spokesman Robertson told Navy Times Thursday that “there is no plan to test the entire crew at this time.”

What? 

If you have ever been on a ship, if one person gets sick then pretty much every one does. Everything is cramped. especially berthing spaces

“We have asked for more (N95 masks), but they don’t have enough,” the petty officer said. “When we kick back, we are either told to wear the dirty mask or face (non-judicial punishment).”

really? It seems like the Navy has not learned from the TR

“These O-5s work for an O-6 who never come on these boats, who makes policies and makes the O-5 carry them out,” the petty officer said. “The O-5 don’t have the balls to stand up to the O-6 and say what’s going on because he’s afraid he will get fired.”

This. This is probably the most accurate statement about the state of the Navy I have read in a while. 

“The ship remains able to meet its mission,” Cmdr. Sean Robertson said in an email Wednesday. “No Chafee sailors have been hospitalized and all positives are in isolation.”

I highly doubt this. My  guess, the higher ups are going to eventually realize that when the cooks get sick everyone does .

"Eleven of those listed sailors are culinary specialists"

This just shows the Navy has not learned from the TR. 

The below in my opinion sums up my reaction to this