Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Key Issues USAF depot plan LSM design FLRAA program schedule
Justin Katz was Inside the Navy’s associate editor until November 2020. He was previously a local news reporter in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. A New York native, he graduated from Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, with a bachelor’s degree in communication.
The Navy's plans to train and test future sonars and explosives in Hawaii and Southern California are modeled off of fluctuations in training and deployment cycles, which means the service is accepting "a degree of risk" that it will not have sufficient capacity to conduct that training to meet future national emergencies, the service announced last month.
After several years of planning and discussions, the Defense Department notified Congress today that it would pursue a two-ship buy of the third and fourth Gerald Ford-class aircraft carriers, a move that will save an estimated $4 billion, a congressman overseeing Navy shipbuilding told Inside Defense.
The Navy is considering a “phased approach” to recapitalizing the five mission sets bound for a potential common hull shipbuilding program, according to a service spokeswoman.
Navy Secretary Richard Spencer last week identified for Congress the potential impact on a variety of Navy vendors and bases throughout the country if the Pentagon's fiscal year 2020 budget is limited by sequestration.
The Navy's new maritime strategy, seeking to align with the National Defense Strategy, details how the service can prepare for "great power competition" with the Russian and Chinese navies and lays out time lines for future major acquisitions to support the strategy.
The actual execution costs for the Navy's most recently delivered Littoral Combat Ships are more than 20 percent below the congressional cost cap, according to a service spokesman. (UPDATED)
The significance of sea and air power should drive the conversation about the Pentagon's topline budget, a congressman likely to lead oversight of Navy shipbuilding next year told Inside the Navy this week.
The Navy is not ruling out the possibility of splitting the award for production of 20 next-generation frigates between two or more shipbuilders, according to the service's top civilian.
Navy Secretary Richard Spencer today told Congress he predicts the Navy will achieve a "clean audit" in five to six years.
The Navy has deemed a theoretical "MH-53K King Dragon" helicopter as "not practical," estimating procuring such a platform could cost up to $7.6 billion in 2014 constant-year dollars for 48 aircraft, while developing and testing the aircraft could run $2.6 billion, according to documents viewed by Inside the Navy.
A potential $33 billion cut to the Defense Department's topline budget in fiscal year 2020 would have "a profound impact" on the size of the Navy's fleet, said the service's second most senior civilian, who also raised questions about the Navy's latest aircraft carrier program.
The Marine Corps plans to use other transaction agreements to procure wargaming technology prototypes and begin testing those prototypes at the beginning of fiscal year 2020, according to a Federal Business Opportunities notice published today.
The Navy today awarded 1,870 companies indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity, multiple award contracts for Seaport Next Generation, the next iteration of the services contracting vehicle SeaPort-e, according to a Defense Department statement.
The minesweeping system subsumed by the Navy's newest mine countermeasures program missed its planned milestone C decision date earlier this year because of poor weather and the impact of Hurricane Michael.
As part of the run up to its annual technology exercise, the Navy is seeking industry participants for an experiment using autonomous unmanned aerial systems to transport cargo between ship and shore, according to a Nov. 27 Federal Business Opportunities notice.
Following industry feedback, the Navy is moving away from its initial vision of a program that would produce one ship hull for five mission sets and is instead weighing using two or more designs.
The chief of naval operations and the Navy's acquisition executive recently validated the requirements for the future frigate, according to service officials.
The Navy is "likely" to stand up an independent review team to help oversee the production, testing, certification and long-term sustainability of the advanced weapons elevators bound for the Ford-class aircraft carriers, according to the Navy's top acquisition official. (UPDATED)
The Navy expects to decide whether it should pursue a two-aircraft-carrier buy of CVN-80 and CVN-81 by the end of next month, according to the service's top acquisition official.
The Navy plans to award a production contract for two low-rate initial production Unmanned Influence Sweep Systems in fiscal year 2019 following a planned milestone C decision, according to a Navy spokesman.