Unmanned Minesweeping Boats Show Promise in Testing Aboard LCS

The MCM USV unmanned minesweeping boat for LCS (Textron)

PUBLISHED AUG 23, 2021 6:48 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE 

The long-delayed minesweeping system for the U.S. Navy's Independence-class Littoral Combat Ship series has completed its initial operational test and evaluation period, according to Naval Sea Systems Command. 

Testing aboard the LCS USS Manchester in May and June was successful, NAVSEA's Program Executive Office for Unmanned and Small Combatants reported. The Manchester's crew pitted the Textron-built mine countermeasures unmanned surface vehicle (MCM USV) against standardized instrumented test targets, demonstrating that the system could operate and get maintained aboard the LCS platform.

One of the core "mission packages" for LCS, the unmanned influence sweeping system (UISS) consists of the Textron surface vehicle and a towed minesweeping payload. It is designed to trigger magnetic, acoustic, and magnetic/acoustic combination mines. In addition to the LCS platform, the UISS can deploy from shoreside staging points, and the crew tested this functionality as well.

“Completion of this operational test event achieves a major milestone for the UISS Program of Record,” said Capt. Godfrey “Gus” Weekes, LCS Mission Modules Program Manager. "The test event demonstrated for the first time both the capability and sustainability of a minesweeping capability using an unmanned system from an LCS in an operationally realistic environment."

After a post-trials data analysis and evaluation, the system now awaits a declaration of initial operating capability (IOC), allowing the Independence-class community to deploy it in the real world. If approved, Textron could build up to 48 of the unmanned MCM USV vessels to outfit the fleet.

UISS is a long-awaited upgrade for the even-numbered LCS hulls, which were permanently assigned to carry mine countermeasures systems after a re-evaluation of the LCS swappable "mission module" concept in 2016. The same year, the Navy suspended work on an unreliable submersible MCM platform - the Lockheed Martin Remote Multi Mission Vehicle - and switched to Textron's MCM USV instead. Shortly after, the service reduced its performance requirements for UISS, and decided to focus on successful integration with LCS rather than a high mine clearance rate. 

Rear Adm. Casey Moton, program executive officer for unmanned and small combatants, told Breaking Defense last month that the LCS MCM package is a "key priority" for his office. The Navy is increasingly interested in mine warfare - both minelaying and mine countermeasures - as great power competition heats up in the Indo-Pacific. China's PLA Navy has invested heavily in mine warfare technology, and it has the capability to draw on more than two dozen sea mine variants if it wishes to hold the U.S. Navy's surface combatants and submarines at risk.

U.S. Navy’s Unmanned Influence Sweep System Completes Initial Operational Test and Evaluation

NAVAL SEAS SYSTEM COMMAND

Aug. 23

By PEO Unmanned and Small Combatants Public Affairs

WASHINGTON — The Program Executive Office for Unmanned and Small Combatants (PEO USC) has completed the ship-based Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E) for the Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS) program onboard the littoral combat ship (LCS) USS Manchester (LCS 14) off of the California coast.

The ship-based IOT&E, conducted in May and June, included end-to-end minesweeping missions versus Navy Instrumented Threat Targets (NAVITTARs) and demonstrated UISS supportability and integration with the LCS seaframe. The IOT&E team conducted pierside and underway launch and recovery, maintainability demonstrations, and end-to-end mission execution in support of Initial Operational Capability (IOC) and delivery of capability to the Fleet.

Designed for the LCS as part of the mine countermeasures mission package, the UISS consists of a mine countermeasures unmanned surface vehicle (MCM USV) and a towed minesweeping payload for influence sweeping of magnetic, acoustic, and magnetic/acoustic combination mines. UISS can also be launched from vessels of opportunity or from shore.

“Completion of this operational test event achieves a major milestone for the UISS Program of Record, and demonstrates continued progress to fielding the full capability of the MCM Mission Package aboard LCS,” said Capt. Godfrey “Gus” Weekes, LCS Mission Modules Program Manager (PMS420). “The test event demonstrated for the first time both the capability and sustainability of a minesweeping capability using an unmanned system from an LCS in an operationally realistic environment. I want to highlight the adaptability and dedication of the test teams across many organizations in  executing these critical tests despite the challenges imposed by COVID-19.”

LCS MCM sailors performed all operations during the UISS IOT&E events, including shore- and ship-based launch and retrieval, command and control, system maintenance, mission planning and post-mission analysis. Pending data analysis and concurrence of operational effectiveness and suitability, the next phase will be approval by PMS420 for UISS to proceed to IOC.

                                                                      - NAVSEA -

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Marinette Marine awarded $38.1 million mod to frigate contract

Written by Nick Blenkey

MarineLog.com

Fincantieri Marine Group member Marinette Marine Corp., Marinette, Wis., has been awarded a $38,172,896 cost-plus-fixed-fee modification to previously awarded contract N00024-20-C-2300 to exercise an option for fiscal 2021 engineering and class services requirements in support of detail design and construction of the Constellation-class guided-missile frigate.

Work will be performed in Marinette (40%); Newport News, Va. (25%); New York, N.Y. (10%); Philadelphia, Pa. (10%); Ayer, Mass. (5%); Arlington, Va., (5%); Herndon, Va. (2%); Camden, N.J. (2%); and Tulsa, Okla. (1%), and is expected to be completed by August 2022.

Fiscal 2021 shipbuilding and conversion (U.S. Navy) funds in the amount of $5,000,000 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity.

Categories: News, Shipyard News Tags: constellation class, Fincantieri Marine Group, frigate, Marinette Marine, U.S. Navy

Report to Congress on Constellation-class Frigate Program (FFG-62)

August 13, 2021 8:38 AM

USNI.org

The following is the Aug. 10, 2021 Congressional Research Service report, Navy Constellation (FFG-62) Class Frigate (Previously FFG[X]) Program: Background and Issues for Congress.

From the report

The Navy began procuring Constellation (FFG-62) class frigates (FFGs) in FY2020, and wants to procure a total of 20 FFG-62s. Congress funded the first FFG-62 in FY2020 at a cost of $1,281.2 million (i.e., about $1.3 billion) and the second in FY2021 at a cost of $1,053.1 million (i.e., about $1.1 billion). The Navy’s proposed FY2022 budget requests $1,087.9 million (i.e., about $1.1 billion) for the procurement of the third FFG-62, and $69.1 million in advance procurement (AP) funding for the fourth and fifth FFG-62s, which are programmed for procurement in one or more future fiscal years.

Four industry teams competed for the FFG-62 program. On April 30, 2020, the Navy announced that it had awarded the FFG-62 contract to the team led by Fincantieri/Marinette Marine (F/MM) of Marinette, WI. F/MM was awarded a fixed-price incentive (firm target) contract for Detail Design and Construction (DD&C) for up to 10 ships in the program—the lead ship plus nine option ships. The other three industry teams reportedly competing for the program were led by Austal USA of Mobile, AL; General Dynamics/Bath Iron Works (GD/BIW) of Bath, ME; and Huntington Ingalls Industries/Ingalls Shipbuilding (HII/Ingalls) of Pascagoula, MS.

As part of its action on the Navy’s FY2020 and FY2021 budgets, Congress has passed provisions relating to U.S. content requirements for certain components of each FFG-62 class ship, as well as a provision requiring the Navy to conduct a land-based test program for the FFG-62’s engineering plant (i.e., its propulsion plant and associated machinery).

The FFG-62 program presents several potential oversight issues for Congress, including the following:

• the Navy’s emerging force-level goals for frigates and other surface combatants;

• the accuracy of the Navy’s estimated unit procurement cost for FFG-62s, particularly when compared to the known unit procurement costs of other recent U.S. surface combatants;

• the potential impact of the COVID-19 situation on the execution of U.S. military shipbuilding programs, including the FFG-62 program;

• whether to build FFG-62s at a single shipyard at any one time (the Navy’s baseline plan), or at two or three shipyards;

• whether the Navy has appropriately defined the required capabilities and growth margin for FFG-62s;

• whether to take any further legislative action regarding U.S. content requirements for the FFG-62 program;

• technical risk in the FFG-62 program; and

• the potential industrial-base impacts of the FFG-62 program for shipyards and supplier firms in the context of other Navy and Coast Guard shipbuilding programs.

Navy Issues Multiple Contracts Worth Up to $2.76B for East Coast Littoral Combat Ship Maintenance

By: Mallory Shelbourne

August 13, 2021 7:54 PM

USNI.org

The Freedom-variant littoral combat ships USS Wichita (LCS 13) and USS Billings (LCS 15) participate in a maritime training exercise with the Freedom-variant littoral combat ship, USS Sioux City (LCS 11), July 4, 2021. US Navy Photo

The Navy has issued multiple awards cumulatively worth up to $2.76 billion to maintain its East Coast-based Littoral Combat Ships, according to a Friday Defense Department contract announcement.

BAE Systems’ ship repair yard in Jacksonville, Fla., and Fincantieri Marine Systems North America, which is based in Chesapeake, Va., received a multiple award contract worth up to $1.3 billion for LCS maintenance.

“These efforts consist of chief of naval operations dry docking selected restricted availabilities and selected restricted availabilities, continuous maintenance, emergent maintenance, ship assessments, preventative/planned maintenance, facilities maintenance, and corrosion control in the contiguous U.S.; and continuous maintenance, emergent maintenance, preventative/planned maintenance, facilities maintenance, and corrosion control,” according to the Aug. 13 Pentagon contract announcement.

The service also issued the General Dynamics NASSCO ship maintenance facility in Mayport Fla., Austal USA, North Florida Shipyards Inc., Tecnico Corp., Colonna’s Shipyard Inc., East Coast Repair & Fabrication LLC, and Epsilon Systems Solutions Inc., a separate multiple award contract worth up to $965 million to maintain Littoral Combat Ships based in Mayport.

The Navy issued a third multiple award contract to several small businesses – Neal Technical Innovations LLC, Valkyrie Enterprises Inc., and Life Cycle Engineering Inc. – worth up to $499.2 million to perform LCS maintenance.

The awards are specifically for the maintenance of LCS based in Mayport, Fla. While the three multiple award contracts are in total worth up to $2.76 billion, each company is currently receiving only $10,000.

“The purpose of these sustainment execution contract efforts is to continue and expand the contractor base of ship yards capable of performing the required maintenance, repair, and modernization of LCS Class Ships by awarding IDIQ MAC prime contracts,” Naval Sea Systems Command spokesman Alan Baribeau told USNI News in a statement.

“The ship repair Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Multiple Award Contracts (MACs) are supply contracts with incidental service elements. The supply being procured is the repaired, mission-ready vessel, which is returned to service within the Fleet,” Baribeau added. “The work will be for LCS ships homeported in Mayport, FL. After contract awards, the Government will solicit individual Delivery Orders amongst the MAC-IDIQ holders based on actual work packages.”

Earlier this month, Austal USA – along with Continental Maritime of San Diego LLC and Epsilon Systems Solutions Inc. – received a multiple award contract worth up to $344.7 million to help maintain the Navy’s West Coast-based Littoral Combat Ships, which are homeported in San Diego, Calif.

While the Navy originally envisioned a contractor-centric maintenance approach for the Littoral Combat Ships, the service is shifting to having its sailors do more maintenance and sustainment work.

Vice Adm. Roy Kitchener, the commander of Naval Surface Forces, said earlier this summer that while the Navy will still need contractors to do some LCS maintenance, he wants sailors to perform the bulk of the work.

“I think one of the toughest challenges we’ve had is quite frankly one is how we do the maintenance. That was very different for us – going to the [contractor]-based maintenance and sailors being more of an operational role and maybe picking up 10 to 20 percent of the work to be done,” Kitchener told reporters in June. “It left us with the inability quite frankly to troubleshoot to the level that the Navy is used to doing. You know, on all the ships I served [on] that’s why we have them – sailors – there and we have all the things, the tools needed.”

Chinese See U.S. Littoral Combat Ship as ‘Powerful Tool’ in Future Distributed Conflicts

By: Sam LaGrone

August 11, 2021 6:35 PM

USNI.org

Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS-10) launches a Naval Strike Missile (NSM) during Exercise Pacific Griffin on Oct. 1, 2019. US Navy Photo

The Chinese military sees the Littoral Combat Ship armed with anti-ship missiles as a key element of a U.S. distributed maritime force in the Western Pacific, according to a translation of a 2020 Chinese government research paper on the U.S. Navy’s distributed lethality concept reviewed by USNI News.

Chinese researchers “compared the littoral combat ship (LCS) with other surface combatants, arguing that the former’s modularity, cheap price, high speed, and other characteristics enable it to become a powerful tool in future distributed lethality tactics,” reads the “The U.S. Navy’s Distributed Lethality Implementation Method” paper from the Marine Design & Research Institute of China (MARIC). MARIC is the central research and development arm for China’s shipbuilding sector.

In particular, the speed at which the U.S. incorporated a test of a Harpoon missile in 2016 on an Independence-class LCS got Chinese attention.

“The results showed that with simple transformation the LCS could also possess some anti-ship capabilities,” reads the paper.
“Modular weapons can reduce ship construction costs while weapons manufactured with the same interface standard can be easily installed on ships that meet this standard. This is extremely conducive to boosting the ship’s overall capabilities, while ease of maintenance and ability for rapid retrofitting are greatly enhanced.”

There are other signs the Chinese military is interested in the LCS concept. The U.S. restarted deploying the Independence-class ships to the Western Pacific starting in 2019 after an almost two-year pause. Since their return, the Indys, most with the capacity to field Naval Strike Missiles, have drawn more scrutiny from the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

While the ships were operating in the South China Sea, the LCS drew three People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) ships to monitor their operations, while an Arleigh Burke guided-missile destroyer typically draws a single Chinese warship to tail it, several Navy officials have told USNI News.

Earlier this year, former U.S. 7th Fleet commander Vice Adm. Bill Merz said the addition of the NSM on the Independence-class LCS would complicate the Chinese calculus in the region.

“When I think about what adversaries have to think about – now it’s not just one particular focus area; now they’ve got to look across the entire theater – and that challenges a staff, that challenges their capabilities. I think it was a huge win, and we’re just seeing the start of that, what multiple LCS in theater can do,” he said.

The Chinese are developing their own version of the Independence-class LCS.

Beyond the LCS, the paper acknowledged that more U.S. surface ships with more anti-ship missiles operating in small surface action groups, rather than larger formations like carrier strike groups or amphibious expeditionary strike groups, would complicate Chinese operations in the Pacific.

“The miniaturization of USN formations is not simply a change in the composition of the formations. Rather, it is an effort to create fully balanced combat forces by integrating platform capabilities, to leverage widely distributed and dispersed combat operations to lower the probability of being detected by [enemy information, surveillance and reconnaissance systems]. Using large numbers of small formations can also create more combat possibilities, generating a full range of threats to the opponent and placing enormous pressure on the opponent’s ISR systems,” reads the paper.

The Chinese answer to the distributed fleet is an investment in improved sensors and maritime awareness and a more robust wargaming program that would train an artificial intelligence battle management aid that could outperform a military commander faced with the distributed force.

“Distributed lethality is an attempt by the U.S. in intelligent warfare, and AI confrontation is also a revolutionary change in future warfare. Therefore, it is necessary to assist command on the battlefield by establishing a wargaming system that can rigorously reflect reality to train an AI system that can deal with distributed lethality,” reads the paper.

For military and civilian applications, Beijing has invested massive amounts into perusing artificial intelligence, according to the final report issued by the U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence in March.

“China possesses the might, talent, and ambition to surpass the United States as the world’s leader in AI in the next decade if current trends do not change,” reads the report.

The U.S. is currently researching its own AI-powered battle management aids and is currently in the midst of the wide-ranging Large Scale Exercise to prove out major tenants of its Distributed Maritime Operations concept.

USS Nantucket (LCS 27) Christened And Launched

By

Dorian Archus -

August 9, 2021

NavalPost.com

Lockheed image

The Lockheed Martin-led shipbuilding team launched and Polly Spencer, ship sponsor and wife of the 76th Secretary of the U.S. Navy, Richard V. Spencer, christened Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) 27, the future USS Nantucket, into the Menominee River at the Fincantieri Marinette Marine Shipyard on Saturday, August 7, 2021, Lockheed Martin announced.

“Lockheed Martin is proud to celebrate this milestone for Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) 27 the future USS Nantucket. The LCS Freedom-variant is a resilient, flexible warship, designed to meet the evolving missions of the U.S. Navy. The Lockheed Martin team continues to partner with the U.S. Navy to add lethality and survivability enhancements to the highly capable LCS class and we look forward to continued delivery of these adaptable ships.” – Steve Allen, Lockheed Martin Vice President, Small Combatants and Ship Systems

“I am proud to be the sponsor of the future USS Nantucket. Seeing this great ship launched and christened, knowing the missions it will serve for the U.S. Navy, is a humbling experience. It’s a great honour for LCS 27, the future USS Nantucket, to be named after my home and a town with such a rich and storied maritime history. I look forward to its future service to the crew and our nation.” – Polly Spencer, Ship Sponsor of the future USS Nantucket (LCS 27)

Ship Sponsor Polly Spencer Breaks A Bottle Of Sparkling Wine Across The Bow During The Christening Ceremony For The Nation’s 27th Littoral Combat Ship, The Future USS Nantucket.

“Building LCS 27 and sister ships for the U.S. Navy is an honour and we are proud to be the nation’s shipyard in the heartland. The launch and christening we witnessed is a testament to the hard work of more than 2,500 shipbuilders who pass through our gates, put on their hard hats and build American warships.” – Mark Vandroff, Fincantieri Marinette Marine CEO

Mark Vandroff, CEO Of Fincantieri Marinette Marine (FMM) Delivers Remarks At The Sponsor’s Dinner For Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) 27, The Future USS Nantucket. (Lockheed image)

“The future USS Nantucket will truly honour the rich heritage of the people of Nantucket and the maritime legacy that the island represents. Having dedicated much of my life to living in and serving the town of Nantucket, I know just how proud our community is of LCS 27 bearing our island’s name and knowing that the ship and its crew will fulfil critical missions on behalf of the U.S. Navy for years to come.” – C. Elizabeth Gibson, Nantucket Town Manager 

Unique among combat ships, LCS is designed to complete close-to-shore missions and is a growing and relevant part of the Navy’s fleet.

• It is flexible—with 40 percent of the hull easily reconfigurable, LCS can be modified to integrate capabilities including over-the-horizon missiles, advanced electronic warfare systems (SEWIP) and decoys (Nulka), and in future, vertical launching systems or laser weapon systems.

• It is fast—capable of speeds in excess of 40 knots.

• It is automated—with the most efficient staffing of any combat ship.

• It is lethal—standard equipped with Rolling Airframe Missiles (RAM) and a Mark 110 gun, capable of firing 220 rounds per minute.

Lockheed Martin is in full-rate production and has delivered 10 ships to the U.S. Navy. There are six ships in various stages of production.

Navy Will Test Freedom-class LCS Gear Fix Next Month; Years Before Repair Reaches Rest of Fleet

By: Sam LaGrone

August 2, 2021 10:23 PM

USNI.org

LCS 21 (Minneapolis-Saint Paul) Christening and Launch on June 15, 2019.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – The Navy is putting Littoral Combat Ship Minneapolis-Saint Paul (LCS-21) back together after completing a repair to beef up the complicated gearing mechanism that links the ship’s gas turbines to its diesel engines, service officials told USNI News on Monday.

In January, the Navy stopped taking delivery of the Freedom-class from Lockheed Martin after determining the RENK AG-built combining gear was under-engineered following a string of high-profile failures. In total, 13 Freedom-class LCS require the fix to the complicated gearing mechanism deep in the heart of the hulls.

The ships affected are now restricted by Naval Sea Systems Command to using either the ship’s diesel engines or its MT-30 gas turbines, but not both – keeping the ships from their 40 knot top speed.

The Navy, Lockheed Martin and RENK AG tested a fix for the gearing in March in Germany and are finalizing the repairs on Minneapolis-Saint Paul at Escanaba. Mich., where the ship was taken to free up space at Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Wisconsin.

“It’s a very complex fix to replace the bearings on the combining gear. It’s a very tight space, there’s a lot of interferences that have to be removed,” said LCS deputy program manager Howard Berkof on Monday. “We completed that, we’re in the process of putting the ship back together and we will conduct at-sea testing of LCS 21 in the September timeframe.”

The Navy, RENK and Lockheed Marin have devised three ways to potentially repair the gear. One requires a hull cut in the middle of the ship, while a second unvalidated repair replaces the bearings without removing the gear. The third, which was used on Minneapolis-Saint Paul, involved dropping the gear to the mission bay where the ship’s small boats will reside and removing the gear through the door in the aft of the hull, officials told USNI News.

The next steps will be to test the fix in the Great Lakes by putting the repaired gear through a series of elaborate propulsion drills for both Minneapolis-Saint Paul and under-construction USS Cooperstown (LCS-23). The goal would be to validate the repair on both ships and leave the Great Lakes before the path to the Atlantic freezes.

“We expect to validate the combining gear year effects at sea and at which point we will continue to implement with providing our fix across new construction and in-service ships in that, that those details are still being worked,” Berkof said.

The repairs will be included in the under-construction USS Marinette (LCS-25), USS Nantucket (LCS-27)

Beloit (LCS-29), the final Freedom-class ship, USS Cleveland (LCS-31), will be outfitted with a fully corrected combining gear.

How the rest of the fleet of Freedoms will be repaired and who will pay for it is still an open question. The complexity of the repair, as currently devised, will take years to trickle into ships already in the fleet, Berkof said.

While the contract repair for the yet-to-be-deployed ships has been determined, the Navy and Lockheed Martin are still negotiating how the fixes will happen and how they will be paid for, he said.

The two Freedoms not affected by the NAVSEA restrictions are USS Freedom (LCS-1) and USS Fort Worth (LCS-3). The two original hulls were built with a different mechanism, built by U.S. company Philadelphia Gear, to join their turbines and diesels.

The Navy has asked to decommission both ships, with Freedom slated to leave the fleet in September.

CNO Gilday: Keeping Littoral Combat Ships Nimble Key to Pacific Deployments, No Plans for 1st Fleet in Singapore

By: Dzirhan Mahadzir

July 28, 2021 12:03 PM

USNI.org

An MH-60S Knight Hawk helicopter assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 21 (HSC 21) lands on the flight deck of the independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Tulsa (LCS-16) on July 5, 2021. US Navy Photo

KUALA LUMPUR — The Navy is making Littoral Combat Ship deployments in the Indo-Pacific region more flexible and unpredictable, allowing the service to respond to impromptu engagement opportunities and ensuring the LCS are not tied to any fixed location for too long, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said during a media conference call on Wednesday in conjunction with his official visit to Singapore.

USS Charleston (LCS-18) has used Singapore as a replenishment port while USS Tulsa (LCS-16) has largely operated out of Guam – a break from the Navy’s initial plan for the platform that had Singapore Changi Naval Base as the only service’s LCS hub in the Pacific.

“We’re just flexing towards different exercises and movements and trying to be operationally unpredictable. We’re being very aggressive in terms of moving LCS in different regions out here, trying to do it very quickly, putting ourselves in a position where we don’t have to keep them in any given location for very long, that we can move them around to any exercises at a short fuse or PASSEX exercises with other navies,” he said.

The Navy has been focused on resolving the problems of the LCS and is headed in the right direction in regard to the operational availability of the LCS fleet, with deployments to the Caribbean and to the Western Pacific, Gilday said. The plan to deploy up to four LCS from Singapore currently meets the Navy’s operational commitment, but in the future, I would like to see more LCS operating in the Western Pacific but we have not settled on what the basing model might be for those ships.” He added that the rotational deployment in the Singapore model and the home basing model in Japan have both worked well for the Navy.

Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Mike Gilday meets with Chief of Navy, Republic of Singapore Navy Rear Adm. Aaron Beng during a trip to the region on July 26, 2021. US Navy Photo

Gilday dismissed the idea of the establishment of a U.S Navy 1st Fleet command based in Singapore. “Right now the United States Navy has no plans to stand up another fleet headquarters, whether it is in Singapore or in any place else in the Western Pacific,” he said.

Instead, the Navy is exercising the inherent mobility of its existing fleet headquarters to deploy wherever a fleet headquarters is required. “Sometimes people tend to think of those fleet headquarters as geographically constrained, that they can only operate in those specific areas of operations but that’s now how we look at it,” Gilday said.

The service wants to be more innovative, not self-limit via geography and use its fleet headquarters in a much more mobile way.

“There are other options besides standing up an additional fleet headquarters to meet any kind of operational demand we may have, whether it is in the Indian Ocean or Western Pacific or other regions,” he said. Gilday cited the example of U.S 2nd Fleet command team, based in Norfolk, Va., that has deployed to North Carolina, Iceland, aboard a command ship in the Mediterranean, Norway and Denmark.

Speaking on the inclusion of the destroyer USS The Sullivans (DDG-68) in the U.K. Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth Carrier Strike Group and the embark of U.S. Marine Corps Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 211 on the carrier, Gilday said the Navy was happy to be part of the strike group and it had been successful in terms of interoperability and interchangeability. He said the Marine F-35 deployment will provide experience and flexibility for future deployments of U.S F-35s on HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08).

Earlier on Wednesday, Gilday participated in the International Maritime Security Conference, delivering a presentation there that reiterated the U.S Navy’s commitment to ensuring security and stability globally with its partners. At the same time, Gilday also gave a brief preview on the upcoming Large Scale Exercise 21, saying, “Later this summer … we’ll conduct the biggest U.S. Navy exercise in a generation with Large Scale Exercise 2021. Spanning 17 time zones … approximately 25,000 Sailors and Marines on both sides of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans will leverage the integrated power of our sensors, weapons, and platforms across all domains.”

During the conference, the Chief of the German Navy, Vice Adm. Kay-Achim Shönbach, said frigate FGS Bayern (F217) will be dispatched in August and reach the Indo-Pacific in the beginning of September. The ship will return to Germany by March 2022. He also said that in the future, there is the possibility of using crew changes to sustain vessels in the Indo-Pacific region for up to two years and that Germany might set up a permanent logistics hub in Singapore or Australia.