Acquisition headlines (1/23 - 1/29/2023)

Navy closes 4 Puget Sound submarine dry docks following earthquake risk study. (USNI News) “As a result of the findings, the Navy over the last week brought in about one hundred experts from across the fleet and outside the service to assess the seismic risk to the dry docks… The pause at the dry docks will not result in the reduction of the 14,000 personnel working at the yard.”

An overhaul to the dry docks that would allow them to better sustain earthquake damage could take somewhere between 18 and 24 months.
It’s unclear how the pause in the four dry docks will affect the backlog of nuclear submarine maintenance in the service’s four public shipyards.

Twelve problems negatively impacting defense innovation. (AEI) Bill Greenwalt: “Any impending conflict, or perhaps more optimistically the ability to deter a future conflict, will require not only production at scale, but innovation at scale that hasn’t been seen since WWII and the early Cold War.”

There is no sense of urgency yet. (2) Process compliance is our most valued objective rather than time. (3) We are all communists now. (4) Budget inflexibility in year of execution. (5) The predictive and lumbering requirements process. (6) Operational interests are not aligned. (7) The barriers to civil-military integration of the industrial base have continued to widen. (8) Defense contracting has become more of an enforcer of socio-economic programs. (9) The authority and ability of program officials to do their jobs has been limited by adversarial oversight. (10) Just in time efficiency requirements and barely minimal sustainable production rates have destroyed defense. (11) Incentives for industry are not aligned to DOD innovation interests. (12) Security and technology control policies (ITAR).

US defense industry unprepared for a China fight, report says. (Defense News) “Given the lead time for industrial production, it would likely be too late for the defense industry to ramp up production if a war were to occur without major changes.”

For example, the U.S. has committed more than 160 M777 155mm howitzers to Ukraine, leaving its inventory “low.” Manufacturer BAE Systems would need at least 150 orders over several years to justify restarting production lines.
While it takes Lockheed Martin two years to make LRASMs, the think tank projects a Taiwan conflict would drain U.S. military supplies within a week.
Along these lines, the CSIS report recommends the U.S. create a strategic munitions reserve. The government, under the authorities in the Defense Production Act, would buy one or two lots of long-lead subcomponents — such as metals, energetics and electronics — for critical munitions to reduce the 12-24 months of lead time in times of crisis.

ARES shipyard unveils new Predator and Dagger interceptors. (Naval News) “Turkish shipbuilder Ares Shipyard, known for its ULAQ unmanned surface vessel and fast patrol boat solutions, unveiled the Predator and Dagger variants of its ARES 32 interceptor vessel on January 24, 2023.”

ARES 32 PREDATOR is configured with ROKETSAN’s new generation, two single-canister CAKIR cruise missiles with an effective range of over 150 km, in addition to quad-cell shorter-range L-UMTAS laser-guided missiles.
Both ARES 32 PREDATOR & DAGGER variants have 25 mm or 30 mm remote controlled auto stabilized naval weapon systems on the fore deck.

How to solve manufacturing’s talent problem. (The Definite Optimist) “We can throw money at American manufacturing, but do we have the necessary manufacturing talent & workforce to make it happen?… I will assert that the American manufacturing industry’s labor problem is partially a PR problem.”

Without manufacturing work “we don’t just lose jobs… we ultimately damage our ability to innovate.”
(1) Making manufacturing cool ~~again~~ for maybe the first time ever through media. In particular: narrative media and independent media (i.e. influencer media). (2) Addressing the competitive labor marketplace for what it is, and responding with actually competitive pay, career advancement opportunities, and quality treatment. (3) Create the ‘coding bootcamps’ for skilled manufacturing work, and help people understand what a manufacturing career path looks like. (4) Tap into the dejected, demotivated mass of young American men.

Shipyards faced with vexing capacity issues. (Splash) “According to data from Clarksons Research, today’s shipbuilding capacity is around 40% lower than a decade ago. There are now only 131 large active yards, down from 321 at the peak of the previous shipyard boom in 2009. The shipyard forward orderbook cover has edged up to 3.5 years from 2.5 years in 2020 and prices increased 5% across 2022 but were 15% higher on average in 2022 compared to 2021.”

Construction of a RMB20bn ($2.76bn) brand new yard has started in northeast China and will be completed by the end of 2024. The new yard, which will be run by Dalian Shipbuilding Industry (DSIC), will focus on LNG carrier construction.

China Maritime report No. 25: More Chinese ferry tales, China’s use of civilian shipping in military activities 2021-2022. (CMSI China Maritime) “… large volume lift exercises conducted in 2022 suggest that the PLA has made significant progress in the use of civilian vessels for the large-scale lift of PLA troops and equipment into undefended ports, a capability that may be leveraged in a military assault on Taiwan.”

From July-August 2022, twelve RO-RO ferries and cargo ships conducted 82 transits between eleven Chinese ports in a five-week-long large volume lift exercise. The exercise may have transported more than 8,500 military vehicles and 58,000 troops, probably equivalent to a group army.

The Army’s futuristic new goggles actually make soldiers less lethal, Pentagon weapons tester says. (Task & Purpose) “Soldiers hit fewer targets and engaged targets more slowly with IVAS 1.0 than with their current equipment on the buddy team live fire range,” the assessment says.”

the DOT&E assessment also indicates that “user acceptance remains low” for the IVAS. Soldiers simply “prefer their current equipment (Nett Warrior and PVS14 and Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binocular [ENVG-B] night vision devices)” over the IVAS.
a “majority” of soldiers who participated in the operational demonstration “reported at least one symptom of physical impairment to include disorientation, dizziness, eyestrain, headaches, motion sickness and nausea, neck strain and tunnel vision.”

Marine Corps buying Valkyrie drones to investigate future autonomous platforms. (Breaking Defense) ““This contract was awarded by Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division on behalf of the Marine Corps as part of a collaborative effort between the Marine Corps and the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering,”

“Kratos has also managed to turn Valkyrie into a communications relay, according to Fendley. The Kratos executive said the drone can be equipped with a special gateway payload that, when in range of both an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and an F-22 Raptor, allows the two warplanes to communicate with each other.”

Tankers for the Pacific fight. (CIMSEC) “The Department of Defense is projected to need on the order of one hundred tankers of various sizes in the event of a serious conflict in the Pacific. The DoD currently has access it can count on – assured access – to less than ten.”

Military logistics planners lean toward assumed access, that tankers will be available from foreign-flagged tonnage. This assumption betrays a lack of understanding of the international tanker market and the significant influence China now has over it, including the often-overlooked issue of actual ownership.
Legislation should be enacted requiring cargo preference on refined oil products being exported from the U.S. For reference, the U.S. currently exports 1.4 million bbls of refined product, principally to South America, every day, all on foreign flag tankers.
… the program run by the Military Sealift Command (MSC) for prepositioning refined product on tankers fitted for CONSOL should be put back in place.

Northrop Grumman makes play to add power, space on DDGs for weapons. (Defense News) “Northrop Grumman is pitching a way to free up space and weight on existing ships for additions like lasers and microwave weapons.”

Rather than build two separate prime power systems [for SPY-6 and SWEIP], each controlling one weapon system, Northrop Grumman has created a Multifunction Prime Power System… For the IIA destroyers, it is expected to reduce the size and weight of the power system by 20%, while on the new Flight IIIs it would create a 50% reduction in size and weight.“
When the ship needs to use a lot of power in a short time, such as repeated laser pulses, it can pull power from the battery, too, and not affect the performance of the radar.. Sacca likened it to a garden hose with a variable flow nozzle — but when the nozzle is set at a low flow, the remaining water is stored for later use instead of being lost.

Pentagon’s AI chief says data labeling is key to win race with China. (C4ISRNET) ““Machine learning will not save you billets. ML will cost you billets. Why? You have to label that data,” Chief Digital and AI Officer Craig Martell said… “China’s not beating us because they have access to better algorithms... They’re just going to sit in these big rooms: ‘Tank, not tank, tank, missile, not missile,’ just actually labeling data, 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, getting paid nothing, because they live in an autocratic state.””

Shipyard capacity, China’s naval buildup worries US military leaders. (National Defense Magazine) “Sadler estimates that it would take two to three years to expand shipbuilding capacity due to the vendor selection process — which is why Congress should pass legislation in the next session if the Navy wants to be ready by 2027.”

Berger noted labor is the “main limiting factor” for shipyard capacity, as workforce retention has taken a hit across industries because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But he also said the uncertainty of business in the shipbuilding industry has made it even more challenging to keep workers.