By Geoff Fein
While it appears the Navy’s primary focus is on ships, building new ones and maintaining its current inventory, service officials are paying close attention to the array of new aviation assets coming on line, as well as the manpower cost of current and future programs, according to the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO).
“Ships may appear to be the dominant topic or theme of mine, largely driven by having to be involved very personally with LCS and decisions I made on DDG-1000. Those two things made it appear it was all ships all the time,” CNO Adm. Gary Roughead told Defense Daily in an interview last week. “It isn’t really. It really is building the fleet you think we are going to need for the future.”
The situation the Navy finds itself in for the future is one of renewing the fleet, Roughead said. On the ship side that was represented by DDG-1000, which was the new surface combatant, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), the Virginia-class submarine, and the replacement for the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, he added.
“But similarly on the aviation side there’s the Growler coming on, the P-8, there is JSF coming on, UAVs…so there is a renewal taking place there as well,” Roughead noted.
“We are dealing with a point in time where we are kind of renewing the fleet, not renewing from the standpoint of making more of the same, but bringing a lot of systems online,” he said. “And as you look at aviation, it’s also the Marine Corps. When you look at the Navy budget you are basically buying two air forces, and I don’t mean that in a redundant sense because they are very tailored to the missions that we have.”
Roughead also recognizes the importance unmanned aircraft are going to play in the future of the Navy, everything from small tactical unmanned air systems to operating unmanned combat aircraft from carriers.
“I’ve had a push on unmanned systems. We were not optimized organizationally. I’m not sure intellectually that we have started to get into unmanned systems,” he said. “We are stating to get I would say some traction underneath us.”
One of the areas that has really struck a chord with Roughead is how the Navy has not been able to institutionally take into account the cost of manpower.
“We talk about it..we say we do…but in many meetings I sit through and decision briefs that are presented to me, manpower is somebody else’s problem,” he said.
Officials will present a program or policy, but when asked about manpower costs, those officials will says “that’s the chief of personnel’s portfolio,” roughead said.
“I think what we have been able to do here recently in the Navy is to say, if we are going to come in with a proposal we better know how much the manpower is going to cost. Do we have realistic assumptions we are making about manpower,” he said. “Are we thinking about what is the most optimum manpower structure to go forward with what it is we are talking about? I think we are perhaps a little bit more cost conscience than we have been.”
Another area of concern for Roughead is total ownership cost, and bringing other elements of the Navy in earlier on those discussions.
“For example our supply systems command…[we are] now having earlier dialogues with NAVSEA and the sponsors here to look at–‘are we doing this in the right way so we are minimizing the costs that are going to be out there?’ That is where I would say, as I think about things, how do we still deliver that same capability and do it in a way that we fully understand what the fiscal decisions are that we are making.”
Roughead said it might sound like he is being critical of where the Navy has been, “but I don’t think we have had the pressure to make us really think about it.”
As for what the future years will bring as far as funding, Roughead said he isn’t watching percentages or who get’s what.
“The future is what the need is, and then how a service provides a relevant answer to that need. As we talked and looked at the world in which we are going to live and the capability that we bring, I think that the budget reflects an agreement with the fact there are capabilities in the Navy that are relevant to the future and operations we are going to be involved in,” he said. “That is going to be a continuing process.”
Roughead acknowledges there will probably be some peaks and valleys depending on what happens in a particular year, but he thinks it’s a question of really tailoring the force to the future that the Navy believes it is going to need.
He was very pleased with the endorsement the Navy received in deciding to revert back to building more of the Arleigh Burke-class DDG-51s, and the positive attitude being shown the LCS. “If you go back two years to where we were on LCS, people are much more positive on LCS now than they were.
“Not just in what’s being said but where the money is. We are still really committed on how do we take more cost out of that ship, from the standpoint of–on the acquisition side getting efficiencies in production. We are seeing that come down,” he said.
Navy officials are also looking at what if any systems on the ship can be removed or changed to take additional cost out, Roughead said.
Not to do anything on the cheap, he added, but rather as officials look at systems that have vastly varying costs, for example communications equipment.
“On a ship that size if you can take out a couple million dollars on a system that’s not bad…,” Roughead said. “You might say ‘well, that’s only a couple million,’ but a couple million starts to add up.
“We are continuing to have those discussions, not to gut any of the fundamental capability out of the ship, but how do we get lean, effective and best value.”