Naval Air Strategy | Sea-Air-Space 2023

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen distinguished guests and a special welcome and thank you to the men and women in uniform who are joining us here today my name is Steve Norland and I am the vice president and general manager of Boeing's air dominance division I first wanted to say thank you to the Navy League for hosting all of us here at Sea Air and Space and thanks for the opportunity to conduct this very important panel it is an honor to sponsor today's important conversation on the Navy strategic approach for modernization air domain capabilities to stay ahead of a rapidly advancing and real threat environment today tomorrow and for decades to come I'll turn it over to the moderate moderator Admiral Bill Courtney in a moment but I'd like to take a minute to reflect on a few things that we at Boeing are doing to help the Navy get ready for the future fight I'm proud to be here to represent Boeing and its air dominance Division and more than ten thousand strong Workforce in our division we're a portfolio of advanced programs distinct capabilities and talented people brought together very intentionally to help make sure our customers future for owning the air dominance is a reality our division includes our crude flight fighter portfolio including the FNA 18 super hornet The ea18g Growler and the f-15ex Eagle II it includes our groundbreaking multi-mission uncrewed aircraft like the mq-225 stingray and the mq-28 ghost bat and the aircraft's Next Generation fighter pilots were trained on the t7a Red Hawk our phantomworks team which includes our virtual Warfare Center is embedded in the business tighter than ever before ensuring we are weaving all the incredible things the team is doing across our combat aircraft portfolio as we design produce and deliver what comes next for Boeing Air dominance thinking about planning for and investing in capabilities that will Define the Carrier Air Wing of the future is not transactional activity for us it's our passion in civil terms we are investing in three broad areas to ensure we are ready to support the future fight the first of all these things is digital that includes a continued investment in digital engineering the digital thread digital twins model based systems engineering full size determinant assembly and artificial intelligence and much more and we don't just build the world's finest airplanes we build groundbreaking sustainment Solutions as well second we're modernizing our production systems building factories of the future which are investing in billions of dollars in new facilities some of which are already open some coming soon like our new mq-25 Factory and many of which are secure and classified these are just points these just aren't PowerPoint charts but real construction projects underway today and third major area of continued investment is ensuring that we connect our platforms to others across Sea Air and Space which is critical to enduring the future fight but it's about much more than what we're doing at Boeing it's going to take all of us to work together our industry teammates governments Global Partners to be successful in the future fight with that it's my pleasure to turn the stage over to a great Visionary leader Admiral Bill gourtney thank you thank you Steve we appreciate it well first off I want to thank the audience for being here it's really great there's the seats are almost full and uh we just can't thank you enough for after a big lunch that you're coming here to hopefully stay awake from this terrific panel on a panel with me today uh this the strategy of Naval Aviation we have a unique uh opportunity to talk to that strategy to my left Kenny Weitzel they are our air boss and uh air pack to his left is chebs Chevy who is navair syscom of course Oscar Meyer who's air land uh on the East Coast here and then we got bucket Lazelle who's n98 and then we have Sean bond from Elbert systems he's been with elbit systems uh joined him in 2020 uh extensive experience in Aerospace uh with Bae but I couldn't help but read his bio that when he was with Pratt and Whitney his team won the Collier trophy trophy in 2002 and that that's no small feat well done shipmate thank you I'm going to have a few opening remarks and and frails I promise to keep it short and then I'm going to turn it over to our panel they're going to discuss their piece of the strategy and then we're going to open up the floor to your questions so I think we got some mics lined up here so be ready to ask the tough questions and please don't ask any of them to me the uh but for opening remarks you know strategy strategies a lot of people look at strategies and they're big lofty ideas I remember when I was at Fleet forces the CNO at the time uh is getting beaten up on not having a naval strategy uh just like the currency you know sometimes does as well comes with the job and I had to say well I'm not a strategist because I actually get things done and that's a problem when people do write a strategy is they they they make it too lofty and it's unachievable so to have a strategy that is adaptable and uh can be actually be delivered is absolutely critical because we don't get to pick our Wars uh and we we don't get to pick the where and the win when we fight our Wars so we need to be ready the force the fleet needs to be ready uh for the near per fight today and in the future and as a result of that bucket can talk to the tension between current and future Readiness because that's that's where the rub is the combatant commanders and I'm guilty I was one I want the stuff right now and can only see this far in front of our faces where they have to deliver for that capability that's in the face and then into the future um also the system which I'll call Congress OSD and the services right here inside the Beltway you know they're focused on bright new shiny objects at the expense of of current Readiness and it was always hard to convince people that investment in today's Readiness is an investment in future Readiness because we already own 80 percent of our Navy that Navy and Marine Corps that we're going to have just 10 years from now therefore I always look at delivering Readiness through four lenses training readiness modernization and recapitalization training of the force it's our secret sauce we do it better than anybody else the Readiness of the force is everything other than training Modern Nation of the force I think of in terms of for the platforms that we're going to keep how do we modernize them so they're relevant in the future and then recapitalization is the new stuff that's replacing the stuff that we don't want in in the future now the other problem is is that when people talk they don't they tend to look through bright new shiny objects but they don't look through what we caught call the dot mlpf which is Doctrine organizational training Manning and policy solutions to current and future Readiness not everything Demands a material solution there's other ways to go about it so what I've asked the team to do is talk to their piece in delivering the strategy so the air boss is he's in charge he's the supported Commander he's our air boss he's done a phenomenal job uh better than I've seen it done in a really long time and I'm not butt snorkeling there Kenny and um but his job he's going to talk about that strategy a deliverable and adaptable strategy um next we're going to hear from bucket down there who's our n98 bucket has to fund that strategy and he's going to talk about his particular challenges to do that and then we're going to put chebs up who is navair ciscom who has to deliver the capability to that bucket buys that Kenny describes and then we're going to get um Oscar who has come to our land to talk to the man training equip piece as a type commander of that strategy and then we're going to ask Sean to talk to represent all of Industry that delivers uh the greater the great capability that we put our sons and daughters into to go into Harm's Way so with that Kenny over to you thanks Emma Gordon sorry about the cold that I've got it's not my normal voice uh I appreciate everybody coming in for this panel and letting us talk a little bit about where the strategy has evolved over the last couple years and 2023 and Beyond we're pretty fortunate to have Admiral aqualino and Amber paparo as now Indo paycom commanding officer as well as Admiral paparo is the pack Fleet commanding officer the theory the fight the strategy of the fight has been well defined for us and they've laid out the guideposts for us across the services both the joint as well as the naval service of what it's going to take the win in this next uh the next next competition in a pier in a peer environment they've done a good job of laying that out for us so that now we can now take that strategy piece and look at the means that we're going to do it and the ways in which we're going to do it to put the strategy together Oscar is going to talk about some of the man training equip piece of it but as I look at as I look at some of the means piece that's where folks in industry in this room have done a pretty phenomenal job every Naval Aviation platform today is either brand new recently knew is in upgrade or has a program or a soon to be developed program of record for reconstitution we're in pretty good shape right now as I look across those platforms these are the these are the these are the means the systems that we are going to use look across our carrier Force we have both ends of the spectrum on deployment or getting on deployment now you have the oldest Nimitz class carrier on deployment in the Western Pacific the newest nimitz-class carrier George Herbert Walker Bush and the Mediterranean and you've got Gerald R Ford on com2x about ready to go on deployment off the east coast right now an absolute phenomenal achievement in maintaining our nimitz-class carriers for the 50-year plus lifespan Nimitz got extended on her life cycle as well as the over the 14 000 traps that Gerald R Ford has right now as Oscar Meyer has done phenomenal job of working the bugs out of that brand new multi breaking new technology platform to be able to go forward every single one of our platforms knew we're taking deliveries at vfa 125 a brand new F-35 Charlie's as well as the Marine Corps F-35 Charlie's we're already on a road map for tr3 Block 4 JSF Super Hornet is going through current block one current block 2 flying block two to block threes and new purchase for block three as well as additional capabilities in the Super Hornet today a record for us 367 Mission capable super Hornets are on the line today out of about 560 just under 570 total platforms industry's done a phenomenal job Navy's done a phenomenal job of understanding where our lack of efficiencies were and three years ago four years ago as we started in ssp2p we LED ourselves and we're leading the Navy right now in understanding and having credibility in doing our business Growlers 30 Growler capability mods are complete up in Whidbey Island on the road to block two growlers Romeo and Sierras Remain the backbone of our Fleet as we work towards future vertical lift and the ew reports going into the Romeos are absolutely phenomenal only two squadrons need to transition e2c to e2d e2d capabilities are so good they would like to take the e2d off the carrier and help out with the war in between Russia and Ukraine right now because of the capabilities of of that platform I go back and look at p3s or p8s now the transition to p8s and the two more squadrons that are going in reserve absolute phenomenal capability it used to be back in the day if you had two Romeos 60 Romeos 360 Romeos over top of a submarine you were going to kill the submarine if you have one p8 over top of a submarine today you're going to find it and you're going to kill that submarine those guys are doing absolute absolutely uh phenomenal work one other platform on the carrier CMV 22 we've finished two deployments we're getting ready to work up for our third deployment on Vinson with CMV 22 a game changer for us as we add Fuel and Logistics capability into our platform to a point that we are rewriting the con op for CMV 22 it's no longer going to be a Cod platform all of this to be able to fight the 5076 O plan takamo as we finish up our transition or continue our transition to block two uh takamo and then go down the exx path the takamo platform is doing probably the number one Mission the existential mission that we need to have for Naval Aviation why I stay up at night on the Tacoma and I'm proud of L3 Harris and Northrop Grumman Corporation Boeing Corporation for the work that they've done to keep takamo uh at a call as the most survivable command and control platform that we have so we have we have the means to be able to do this the ways that we're doing it is completely groundbreaking in Naval Aviation the student aviators are going through mixed reality virtual reality in their training in their VT their T6 Squadron with the helmets that they're flying they wrote the curriculum for that and we're taking advantage of it now that is moving from the T6 into the T45 platform lvc is a game changer for our Fleet capabilities no longer do you have to come up and have plenty of red air and plenty of blue Air to see a high-end fight live virtual constructive is now to a point where we can do that at Sea Abraham Lincoln deployed with live virtual constructive embedded within the ship so while two planes are out flying around the threat has no idea what the pilots are seeing on their screens and the scenarios that they are that they are training to the lead for all of this is pepper McCoy up at uh up in nautic in his uh integrated uh itl integrated training what is that integrated training facility integrated training so the ITF the number of tubs JSF e2s super Hornets Aegis systems so that we can fight at the high-end fight all inside one building without giving the threat any idea whatsoever of the tactics techniques and procedures that we were doing that we will employ because we are rehearsing the next fight so the strategy is pretty clear for us the four stars has given us the strategy they've given us the ends you guys in the crowd our test community and industries has given us the means to be able to do it in the ways piece we're doing inside the Navy with the the training systems that we've got uh and uh as well as what you guys are providing us to fight with we're in a good position right now a really good position to fight this next conflict wherever it may be thank you air boss okay bucket how are you gonna how are you going to deliver all that through the Palm process okay thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today and uh and thanks to the Year boss because believe it or not the air boss pretty much lets me run this by myself uh when I've got big ticket items that uh that need decision I'd go to them and make sure we're on the same page but other than that he leads me to the day-to-day running of the acquisition of what's going to fund this strategy and so I appreciate that as the Year boss mentioned um we have recapitalized Naval Aviation and so the CNO is very clear in his prioritization for our budget generation and it's Columbia it's Readiness its capability and then its capacity in the construct of the budget okay so earlier on over the last few years given that recapitalization there was opportunity to have Naval Aviation take some money out of its budget to help fund Colombia and psyop okay so uh so now as we start getting into Sixth Gen generation into takamo and the other things as we come out of that bathtub of funding it's time to develop the narrative that is going to start moving some of that funding back into our APN accounts so that we can get on to the next things that Naval Aviation really needs to do CNO is also very clear on his desire to have our future Air Wing be at about the 60 percent unmanned category so that then sets the Strategic guidance for me to use in conjunction with oh plan execution to frame The Narrative how of how we're going to develop the future Naval Aviation force and so in that guys when I got to the job a couple of years ago I got all my staff together and we developed a plan that we call the Air Wing of the future and so that takes five-year increments so I.E fit up chunks across all the way into the 40s and it modifies the content of our carrier strike groups and our Carrier air wings from both the the content of a Carrier Air Wing and the weapons available in the magazines and so as you look at old plan execution you have to judge when an air Wing is going to become effective and if you're starting from X distance away from the target given the fact that they are considering that contested space then the longer the range of the platform and the longer the weapons that it carries dictates the time at which that carry strike group becomes effective okay and so that's what uh has been guiding some of the requirements and weapons and platform acquisition in significantly longer ranges than we have contemplated before there are a lot of implications in doing that but the bottom line is when we're building out a future Force it's going to be 60 unmanned then we're going to look different than we do today and we are no longer going to have a fighting force that has 44 strike fighters on the deck because that's incompatible with a 60 unmanned Air Wing so we're going to have to change the narrative from 44 strike fighters to how many targets can I hit at what range at what time interval because that's the true metric that matters and the type of platform that delivers that ordinance is less important than the ability to do so and so we need to look at the entire portfolio that is resident within a carrier strike group and how we generate that effect equally we need to be cognizant of what is available in The Joint Force such that we don't duplicate capabilities and we work within the our part of that oplan execution but the corollary to that is that the aircraft carrier strike group remains one of The 11 most survivable airplane airfields on the planet okay and so if a fight goes down in one particular area then some other actor may choose to take advantage of what they perceive as a distraction and when they do the single best asset in DOD to go after and cool that down as a carrier strike group and so for that reason we need to retain those capabilities resident within the carriers strike group that can handle any situation so I don't like plans that parcel out specific capabilities and rely on other entities to provide those I try and keep everything within there so that we can go handle those hot spots okay so um covered that so as we look to fund that Air Wing of the future we have numerous unmanned systems okay you've heard talk about ccas uh mq-25 and bottom line is we're developing an unmanned control station that's already installed on three aircraft carriers and that will be the control station for any uas that we buy okay we have unbelievable cooperation with the Air Force right now in the development of mission systems for both 6th gen and ccas and and I'm very close to getting a signed agreement with the Air Force where we're going to have the ability for Navy to control Air Force ccas and Air Force to control Navy ccas that's a pretty big deal and it's very helpful when we're developing a congressional narrative that makes them understand that we're not paying for the same capability twice and it allows the Air Force to spend money on certain developmental items and then the Navy to spend money on certain developmental items so it's about deconfliction of requirements between the the entirety of DOD such that we can generate the most effective force in the shortest period of time and with that I'll turn it over thank you chips good a couple uh high level points and then we'll we'll take to we'll go to the rest of panel members and we'll get to questions here so uh supported Commander uh supporting Commander uh his his North Stars uh for navair or make sure we deliver the warfighting people the fleet needs when they need it capability make sure that the capability we do deliver is ready and available think mcmc and FMC and the last one is affordability how do we make sure every single dollar resource that that bucket provides achieves an outcome that matters to our to the supported Commanders so those are our three North Stars as air boss mentioned FY 22 is a pretty good year from recapitalization perspective from a Readiness perspective taking those Lessons Learned especially from the readiness and applying those across capability affordability and availability so we have a methodical process on how we execute each and every single day just a quick recap one of our platforms you probably figure out which one it is we had troubles with the Readiness for many years and we tried multiple different things I was I'm not sure if animal growth clock is out in the audience I always says Vice commanders we try to get after this and we never moved the needle we finally took the time to Define our North Star how many aircraft we wanted how many aircraft we needed to support the old plan and then we took time necessary time to Define the root cause of our current performance no kidding what was the root cause and then apply the correct controls the right levers and measure ourselves towards an outcome that simple process as we've taken the the wins the advances we had with Super Hornet we've applied it to all the other tms's across both Mission capable as well as full mission capable that same logic and process we're applying that now to capability and affordability as well what is our North Star outcome we're looking for capability we need unmanned ISR by a certain time frame we established that as a tier one North Star that's a North star established we understand the root cause of our current performance who are the stakeholders who is a supported commander who is a supporting commander and we do reviews at the three-star level to drive us towards that outcome and we do this religiously and over and over again it's a different way of looking at the problem but it works so we we've applied that over and over again so that's how we're delivering it we've had some successes we're still learning especially at the capability aspects of it bringing everybody together to make sure we're all aligned on what the North Star outcome is and then what all the branches are in that driver tree to make sure and then make sure they're responsible and accountable person people are delivering if they're not what are they doing to get back on plan what help do they need so we've talked about I hit the a couple other things if I couldn't if I have a moment here um at the end of I am butt snorkeling now full power at the end of uh we had we did rafos and afvots last week and uh at the end of that I came home and it was Friday night Saturday uh with my wife Maggie and I sent a note I sent a thank you note to airboss for the for rafos and alphots I thought it was a wonderful event for all of us all to get to get together but it also added a sentence you know you probably don't hear a thank you that often uh the the accomplishments the Nae has had over the last year under his guidance and Leadership with Oscar has been pretty tremendous we are we are going from good to great so this is this is a good place to be I think you heard the air boss say this that's sir that's under your leadership and you really have driven me the Nae to this point as we go forward we need to continue this momentum as as we deliver the next generation of capability and make sure we continue to focus on capability affordability and availability all right I'll pause there okay Oscar I generate four deployed Naval Air Forces to deter aggression and preserve World Peace and I do that focused on current readiness really through Manning training and equipping the fleet to Echo Admiral cheby's comments I think Naval aviations made tremendous strides on the equipment side of things not to correct the air boss in public yesterday we had 372 Mission capable strike Fighters were really hitting on all cylinders with the initiative in the expansion of our maintenance operations center in the mock we just started doing H1 aircraft with the Marine Corps they are embedded with us in person and in aircraft and we start into Sinatra on the T45 the first week of May so we're making great progress on there we're about ready to take that to a whole new level though of what we call Mach 2.0 which is really an initiative led by the air boss and inspired by highest levels of leadership where we're going to continue to take I'll call it savings that's really a misnomer but we are going to be more efficient and more effective at maintaining and producing Mission capable aircraft we'll continue to pursue do our targets for fully Mission capable but those savings are going to be reinvested into our programs and that's in your execution money that we're able to do things like flood Lines flight gear shelters for aircraft a whole host of things but that reinvestment is going to pay huge dividends we're also seeing amazing results in terms of the OST 42 initiative which if you're a supply individual that refers to 42 days of operation shipping time we've started that experiment on the George Herbert Walker Bush deployment and they have the highest Readiness levels we've seen what that equals by putting more parts on the Shelf which is you know truly an output is about seven additional fully Mission capable aircraft Hornets throughout the entire deployment that's our fight tonight force and when we talk when I talk current Readiness it's all about the preparation and the Readiness that we have to have if the fight goes up tonight important when we talk about the supply chain aspect of that is we can't just look at putting more parts on the Shelf that's I think anybody in the room knows that if you have more parts in the Shelf you have more access that the maintainers love it they just go to the Shelf what we really need this is where we need Industries help is we need better time on Wing better time meantime between failure performance numerous new platforms we've really struggled with components out of the gate we've kind of cleaned the shelves off rapidly because the parts didn't last anywhere near as long but some of the platforms like F-18 were pretty stable today but that doesn't mean we should be satisfied with where we are in the reliability of that Admiral cheby and I work closely on improving reliability identifying those outliers and continuing to make progress in that and then the last point I'd like to make in the current Readiness side is the success that we've had in the mock our maintenance operations center we're in the process of expanding that to what we call the Rock which is Readiness operations center focused squarely on aircraft carriers I won't say we're you know completely fixed for aircraft Readiness we're certainly Out of the Woods we're out of the Wilderness and we're continuing to make improvements carriers though there's a lot of room for improvement that really holds across the entire ship maintenance industry whether it's submarine surface ships or carriers we're going to take the exact same Naval sustainment system Aviation approach to aircraft carrier maintenance we're going to focus on the planning the execution the modernization and the Damage Control posture of those ships the Lead Sled Dog in that experiment or that new way of doing business is Harry S Truman they're hitting every Milestone so far I wholly expect them to come out of the shipyard ahead of schedule that is long overdue and that is exactly the approach that we're taking to carrier maintenance thanks Oscar okay what next we're going to turn it to Sean but after Sean speaks we're going to be taking questions from you all so uh start getting in line in front of the mics sure thank you sir and also thank you uh for letting me be here with with you today um I think Albert America is similar to many uh members of Industry where we focus on providing holistic situational awareness and integrated fuse view of the battle space to enable more rapid decision making and so that's from sensor to Shooter and often that looks like things uh it's products it's uh it's platforms increasingly it's the networking of those things into something that is on board and off board and allows the the Warfighter The Aviator the Marine the Submariner to have a sense of what's going on around them so they get within the ooda loop of of the adversary heinogurtz said this morning at breakfast that he views industry as the offensive line and if you're going to be a good football team you need to ensure that your offensive line knows what the plays are that are happening behind him you're the folks executing those plays so what's really important is to ensure that we have good situational awareness of where you are and where you're going what what are the headaches and heartburns that you're seeing sometimes actually created by us and what can we do to ensure that when you need to run we need a gap we're going to provide that gap for you that is the role of us and we need to be part of those conversations the Holy Trinity of the operator of the acquirer and the technologist and I'm going to argue for a moment that we're the technologists in that in that Trinity so the more we can do to be involved in that and the more that we can include Technologies and capabilities from small businesses and big businesses and the ones that sit in the middle but also Technologies and capability from our allies which quite frankly are eye-watering in many ways I think August is a fantastic step in the right direction of co-development co-production of Technologies across Australia U.S and in the UK and when we prove that we can make that work I think there's a lot of opportunity for industry to help Forge other alliances or relationships for other things that are perhaps less sensitive or perhaps even more sensitive so we are the offensive line and we're here to go ahead and let you execute your plays and I think our biggest challenge is to ensure that we're we're in the Huddle along the way and we can go ahead and ensure we have the right players on the field at the right time well said Sean thank you very much okay over to the audience any questions Here Comes one good afternoon Admirals Jay Mueller from the San Diego navy League my question is regarding the acquisition of an old and probably a low priority program the C40 for the United States Marines anybody know the progress of that project and what's what's going on with it thank you bucket well um as you may or may not be aware there was a divorce called by SOG about five or six years ago and so the Marines run their own APN now it does not run through n98 anymore and so I have heard that they are getting their first C40 but I don't control that budget if you could see me afterwards and I can get your contact information I'll get you that answer yeah sir good afternoon from HCC log Wing in Norfolk a couple years ago I had an opportunity to participate in webtech with Maritime fires working group looking at how do we accomplish some long-range things in the Pacific and one of the things that came out of that discussion was needing to leverage our you know Allied Partners specifically the Australians and the British with some of their higher end capabilities but running into barriers because they're not fully informed based on classification levels or sometimes lack of compatibility with U.S systems specifically things like data link in order to give everybody in that fight that fully informed picture just wondering if anybody in the crowd could speak to you kind of the and if initiatives going forward of bringing our Allied Partners into kind of a more fully informed mindset on the old plans and how we're going to accomplish those missions thank you you want to take that from your previous job yeah I would say you know you look at in the pack Fleet the Australians are uh is the Deputy uh DMO uh officer there we've just opened up uh four places uh four bases and airfields on board uh on board the Philippines obviously Australia buying uh F's and G's uh you know there is a conscious effort with the fdos now to bring in through the war games which are up to a high number right now as well as to bring into the rehearsals through the rimpac to bring the Allies in probably the most important rehearsal that that allows us to take advantage of and highlight opportunities is the rimpac exercise and then the Valiant Shield exercise in the Western Pacific where all the countries bring their A-game into that fight to be read in at the at the high level is still is it still has some still has some intricacies our national secrets are being guarded uh at some level right now I'm not sure how far that's going to go I don't need that for the Tactical and the low operational level of the house to be able to employ to use maneuver for fires and then fire for maneuver has nothing to do with what you're seeing on your display which you see on your display just trust you got it and go kill it and Admiral small at navor as he's delivering project overmatch being able to share that information with our allies and partners is a key piece of delivering project overmatch hi Bill Schaefer and mega air and it's not a sales pitch when you look at india-pacific and you look at the tyranny of distance and you look like this gentleman just mentioned other partners Australia perhaps Philippines perhaps other countries and you look at the value of gas in the Pacific I'm not sure if you've ever looked at it this way but the fourth largest strategic tanker force is under contract device ammo Chevy that's 12 airplanes it doesn't take many more to be the second largest in the world is there a utilization of those airplanes beyond what we've done the last 20 years on Readiness to provide gas overseas to provide dedicated support you know most of the time we're there because the Air Force isn't which is why Admiral we're dragging cag5 to Hawaii today because the Air Force canceled out and we've got seven airplanes Airborne but is there another role for the airplanes in the india-pacific environment without the contracts out of the house or the uh Bill well since you and I have talked numerous times on this your specific question is is just be very specific what you were asking to make sure I answer it appropriately what I'm asking sir is is there other utilization in the india-pacific environment with like Australia Philippines Taiwan and other countries that could also take advantage of the assets that are under contract I think the answer to that question is yes uh I don't know all those opportunities off the top of my head uh do I have a requirement today to provide that service to those countries that you just mentioned and and I do not so is it something we should be looking at potentially looking at I mean uh long-range fires and how are we going to execute uh the old plan uh gas is going to be a critical aspect of that and that's why we're going after mq-25 and other another assets to provide that that tanking capability for us I think we need I think we need to go to Indo pentaton to help get that demand signal so that Jepsen then execute the contract as well as jump in with M4 for the contested Logistics war game they're on a high number of war game right now and to bring in your number of assets and hopefully your folks are willing to pay a warfighters price if you're providing fuel for us uh you know there's some things to work through with that I think it's a great idea and you know Admiral paparo talks about no platform no person is going to be able-bodied chip able-bodied carrier an able-bodied aviators going forward uh if you're volunteering your Force then to run a pilot to bring your Force into a war game where would you need the basing the overflight the clearance uh I think it's a great that's a great idea especially since we're building up more you know our allies are just flowing into us right now I'd also like to volunteer my competitors Force too that makes it a little bit bigger Admiral yep next question here we go hey gentlemen thanks for having us John Waters call Sam Flanders my question is about hunting angles and other Industries service providers for uh carrier overhauls and availabilities and I just wanted to see I know that y'all are recognizing that there are a lot of steps that go into that process for but for those folks what steps do you all see Industries taking in order to decrease availabilities and shipyard periods in order to get new construction carriers as well as rcoh carriers back to Sea Oscar yeah he's a Christian so Oscar is going to answer this question I'll be happy to give you my perspective on that I think we all recognize that our shipyards hunting Ingles being one of them as a private Shipyard are are behind in their capacity to produce ships on time to build new ships on time and I think that applies at virtually every aspect some of the issues with that are Workforce related some are supply chain issues or or institutional issues that really affect the entire country the entire supply chain and covet does play a role in that but the bottom line is you know from an our perspective from my perspective as the customer I really only care about schedule and that is that I need the carriers to come out on time when we contracted them to come out on time that's the elephant in the room everything else from my perspective is an excuse and we're aggressively pursuing that when I talk about the rock we are going to have hunting ninjas embedded in that today we work very closely the facility's not up yet but nns why the shipyard the private public Shipyard is embedded in that rock process and we're going to see the benefits of that Synergy coming out of that with Truman's availability I view that as the tip of the iceberg to really demonstrate that yes we can produce on time and the real key though is I think you had the nail on the head is it's got to be in the private Shipyard too I live that for a long time as Ford Co before I even got there the delivery date of that was slipping JFK just slipped to the right I think it is a national imperative that we moved those dates left or hold what we have do you have any comments on the the airplane side of delivering on time yeah from the from the carrier I'm glad I don't have to deal with you what you have to deal with so it's better to be navier than FC I'm not sure if Bill galini is out in the crowd uh E6 F-18 slm mq-25 uh M code for GPS F-35 tr3 block 4. all of them are not meeting the schedule requirements that we have laid out so we take an active role right now working with the PM working with the PO working with our industry partner again establishing what is that North Star Target and we need to to feel this capability E6 is a great example the highest uh requirement of a capability and we're struggling right now to kind of get that through the repair lines at both Northrop grumman's getting better and then we're working with LC I think it's focused leadership attention I think it's establishing North Stars I think it's it's taking the time to understand the root cause of your current performance applying the levers and then holding yourself accountable that that formula works over and over again for the most part there are some outliers there so um so you know air boss and I whether it's we're talking T45 Readiness E6 Readiness F-18 what's going on F-35 we track it at our level and we're asking some hard questions working with industry am I asked to Industry and you heard me earlier today please deliver what we have you on contract for from a Costco performance perspective we need that as a minimum and then we'll and then you've heard me say this as well if if if I or we at navair are doing something that's slowing you down or costing you time or money or performance please you know reach out to me directly so that I can address it it's important that we actually plan we have to have a plan we have to understand the root cause and we have to methodically apply the correct correct levers and oversight tool to make sure that we deliver on the outcomes if I can pile onto that I think that's an enormously important aspect to put that in context as aviators were all familiar with cannibalization we do some of that it's a necessary evil I don't I wouldn't argue that we do too much we do it at probably the right time and we have throughout our whole career my sense is we do a lot more of that on the ship side and if we're talking about a Ford class aircraft carrier far too often we've gone to JFK as the parts Locker for parts for Ford not really from a reliability perspective so much but because I referred it as the original sin when we were building Ford in the first place we certainly significantly under-resourced sustainment I think that conversation has to happen when with industry to us when they say Hey you know you're taking us off Target and I'm going to do 10 days of work to cannibalize this pump to pull out and then all the restoration work that's all additive work and an already strained Workforce and I think we have to understand that and probably better document that as well but nobody's had a mic so can I jump in sure carry forward okay so uh the ndaa requires us to have 11 aircraft carriers and so um we often have conversations about new construction about build centers and then we look out in the future and say what does this do to our carrier Force structure but the other side of that is rcoh performance and so uh in the past we have looked at it and we said okay 50 years is their life of a Nimitz class carrier and so at the end of that and rcoh is a sliding scale in the middle of that well what if rcoh gets pushed to the right and then it ends up that that 50-year Mark is only say 20 years after rcoh redelivery instead of 23 and a half years okay so that ends up being an early termination it's why we're talking about service life extension on Nimitz okay but the reality is we need to take another look at that and my Shop's doing this to take a look at what these four structure charts look like if I assume 23 and a half years of life after rcoh delivery so that we are able to track to that ndaa requirement of 11. uh aircraft carriers thank you bucket yes ma'am good afternoon gentlemen Lieutenant commended Gloria McRae FRC Reserve Midwest debt Washington at Andrews my question is I hear a very cohesive and very comprehensive strategy from um all all the players on stage my question is how does the reserve Force fit into that strategy and how can we best support it well that's why we have you know Snapper sets about 15 feet away erlant Reserve sets about 30 feet away from his we would not have gotten through covet if it wasn't for Snapper working our way through Theodore Roosevelt side of the house America would not have gotten through covet for that all of our listed logistical internal logistical logistical move is done by the air for the reserve Force our adversaries are Reserve side of the house when it comes to the combat support and the ability to make us better so to take the ways piece and to make us better as we perfect our ways piece that all lies in the in the reserve Force right now Oscar and I definitely were pers dudes set in Millington Tennessee there was not a day that we walked into work going I I just can't solve this problem you walk down to purge 46 to the reserve and usually by lunchtime they've got a solution for you active reserve integration which was a key acronym about a decade ago is alive and well there's no way that we could exist with about with the without the reserve Force supporting us right now what we would have to do on our own so I wouldn't uh you know we I think the air force does it a little bit better because they combined the force but the way we run it right now under Admiral Mustin and then with Oscar and I having reps leadership reps flag officers at each of our headquarters we can't solve a problem I just picked my butt up and go walk to his office and it solved okay yes ma'am hi Mallory shelborne with us9 news my questions for Admiral Weitzel you mentioned that you're refining the uh the con Ops for the for the CMV 22b and that it's not just going to be a Cod uh could you expand on that what that means what it looks like and what what's the timeline for what you want it to do yeah I think if you look at the way CMV 22 was designed with the extra bladders and the fuel capability and the weight capability to travel stuff around it was it's meant to be able to support us in the Western Pacific I mean that was the design for that now as we go through the N5 and the J5 shops at Indo paycom and pack Fleet now they're opening those up the N5 shop the four places that opened up on the Philippines our partners are starting to open up as they open up and are pairing with the United States Marine Corps with expeditionary Advance base operations places not bases to be able to store stuff weapons employment what can we hang out of the back of uh of CMV 22 Communications piece as a as a node when the threat and we blind ourselves work in zmv 22 if e2d is not available work in CMV 22b is a as a Communications node this is where this is where you it's fun because you're taking the Jos in the cmv-22 community and you're saying this is your world tell us how you want this to be and they're rewriting their con up we're giving a little bit of guidance from the high operational level on what we think we need you to do go out and build a con amp concept of employment and then we'll build you into the con op as you meld into 5076. this is appeared it's a great time to be a CMV 22 guy you're going there tomorrow aren't you daughter Lieutenant JJ chubby flies to CMV 22. if I can pile onto that too the the aspect that I see is it completely changes the logistics support aspect that's you know no longer does it need a Runway to go be a log head it really now opens up any place that it can land as a logistics head so in this notion of contested Logistics that concept is an absolute Game Changer not to mention the fact that it can deliver parts to a lot more than just an aircraft carrier with the resting gear I was lucky enough to get a 1.5 in the left C of a of a marine V-22 when I was Fleet forces and called Nasty when his he was n98 and said this is the Cod replacement and it's not the Cod it's not a Cod it's inner theater Logistics when the fleet commanders I would have killed a fifth Fleet to have that capability to do inner theater lift for those reins and those distances and be able to service every ship in the strike group not just going from uh one Airfield to the Big Deck carrier it's going to be a game changer and the demand signal from the fleet is going to be huge and buckets going to have to figure out how to put more into that budget one more thing just to kind of go back to you know focus on outcomes we've done a tremendous progress across availability across the entire fleet CMB 22 mv-22 we we have work to do so we're bringing them into the process that we've brought all the team messes through but there is work to be done across affordable and availability and on v22 that we're getting after thank you hi Tony capaccio of Bloomberg News hi Admiral how are you good a quick question for uh Admiral witzel and Meyer the China has the greatest Navy largest Navy in the world what role does Naval Air play do you know destroying some of those ships and how important is the new lorazem that's getting accelerated yeah yeah fundamentally we're Maritime power projection you know off the carrier with a maneuverable a maneuverable deck with you know 80 platforms that can choose the fight choose the environment choose the timing for us to uh to be able to conduct a strike at a time and place of our choosing where the threat is always uh is always guessing remember if they come out even though they've got inner lines of communication we're outer lines of communications there those inner lines of communications they still got to come out of their Corner if that is the threat but anti-ship capabilities besides lorazem do you have lorazem is the first line with uh you know we got lorazem 1.0 1.1 is the next version that's coming out and then we've got to follow on uh longer range weapon that's going through design right now competitive bid competitive design and it'll go into the dtot community right now okay that is the priority you've read Admiral aqualinas and papar and paparos their top three one of the top threes is long range weapon Strike weapons foreign the Ford is going to finally deploy next month it was disclosed this morning you intimately are involved with it besides the fact it's taken six years what Air Wing capability is gonna can you just give us a preview of the the Air Wing capability it's going to bring on its first deployment yeah I'll tell you that the the Ford performed fantastically during com2x she met all of her performance parameters and the assessment that we do for our strike groups before they deploy she's back for roughly a month period of time to do some normal routine repairs and that sort of thing refresh the crew the Air Wing will look pretty much like all the other air wings that we have 44 strike Fighters a blend of Romeo Sierras and e2cs on board the Irwin but the beautiful thing about an aircraft carrier is if we want to change that we can change that we can make room remove some aircraft add some other aircraft it's the inherent nature of the Carrier Air Wing It will evolve it is inherently flexible we do that a little bit more I think on the West Coast by plusing up some of the Growler squadrons and and other things but that's one of our great advantages can I ask you what why hasn't the F-35 why can't the F-35 be deployed on it right now what it's going to be in like 400 it could deploy it's purely a number of the squadrons that we've transitioned so a little bit of that has to do with the production rate and the Buy rate that the Navy has of the f-35cs one of the squadrons is coming off I think it's vfa 95 is transitioning to JSF when they get back from George Herbert Walker Bush I would tell you that that is perhaps a little slower than we'd like to see but that's just a byproduct of production delays also acquisition strategy and the install for eye level on the carrier itself and where the need is so fifth Generations needed against the j16s j-20s H6 right now the Western Pacific with the combined uh you can find a JSF with e2d and Growler you have some pretty incredible capabilities not downgrading the need for Mediterranean and the events that are happening over in the uh Eastern Europe but or Western Europe right now the ID our strategy is to get the the most capability forward to the Western Pacific as soon as possible thank you okay we got time for two more questions these two over here yes ma'am good afternoon Lieutenant Nadia Puri I'm a mh-60 Sierra pilot with hsc9 attached to the USS Ford uh came back from com2x this past Sunday and can also attest to the successful completion of Monk 2x uh so how's the food in the forward room then increasingly complex contested and advanced environment how do we continue to support the current Warfighter to ensure our manned capabilities systems and lvc training will prepare Pilots against our peer competitors did you what did you see an lvc on this com2x so I could get in trouble on that question if you say nothing which I would be very disappointed as a Romeo pilot if you have full lvc capability you should have seen a the last weeks of com2x you know what I'm talking about you should have seen a pretty incredible problem yes sir Sierra pilot sir and uh uh same thing you get it over links you get it you get it capability what I did notice was how as an air Wing we all work together how we were able to perform last minute missions that normally missions we prepare for days on end for we were able to do at the drop of a dime well that's true let me let me I'll just I'll inject from from my perspective here so uh I'll reword your question how do we achieve and maintain a Proficiency in the high-end fight for all our air crew whether they're sure they're afloat they're at home they're deployed to your point lvc modeling and Sim is going to be a foundational aspect of that we are currently you know Fielding joint simulation environment to support F-35 iotne and what we have discovered it is a fantastic one-of-a-kind capability for us to train our air crew in right now so we're updating the software to make sure we have the most current F-35 software please Lockheed Martin uh and we're introducing other capabilities into in there as well e2d F-18 Aegis and as well as the Romeo into that platform because to train to that high-end fight against those threats we can't train anywhere else so that's what we're doing in with JSC and then with the next uh iteration is how do we put that at the fleet concentration errors and then what's our plan to put it out on the ship so that we can maintain our proficiency while we're deployed so it's a work in progress and it's continuing to improve in terms of reliability and capability I was just down in Key West and I got to fly in a vfa 106 4v3 red and a whole slew of injects you couldn't tell from the f-18s what was what I mean the the ability to augment that was fantastic and the ability to do it to the highest end in in relatively limited airspace in distances that represent real world threats right off the coast of Cuba without tipping our cards to them that is an absolute Game Changer and I was probably most impressed with the reliability of it the last time I flew and saw it it worked about half the time and I think like a lot of things we're finding if we just keep at it and keep writing gripes and keep demanding that it work we get it to work okay sir I'm gonna have to we've got the hook unless you can make it quick thank you gentlemen can you make it quick Commander Anton Allen from scene heifer I had an answer for the gentleman's questions on the Marine Corps C40 deliveries uh the first one is expected to deliver on the 20th of April and number two uh mid-august there you go off my to-do list thank you very much all right I want a big round of applause for the for the panel members here and thank you for thank you for participating today you all have a great day

Channel: Navy League of the United States

Views: 147

Keywords: sas 2023, sas, sea-air-space, expo, maritime

Id: dHsIKB97hVc

Length: 61min 53sec (3713 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 14 2023