Tag Archives: call for articles

Call for Articles: Forgotten Naval Strategists Week

CIMSEC will soon run a series dedicated to expanding the naval canon entitled “Forgotten Naval Strategists”. From September 30 until October 5 (or when we run out of articles), we want to discover and explore the ideas and works of naval strategists whose names remain largely unknown. Articles are due to “Nextwar(at)cimsec.org” by 26 September.

In an article published in July I argued that a founding manuscript of the naval studies lore is absent in the historiography. Oliveira’s 1555 “The Art of War at Sea” remains unknown to many navalists, including some in his own country: Portugal. The larger and unwritten argument in that piece was that many other works remain unmentioned in the debate. Simply put, these are the works that never make it to the syllabi of naval war colleges.

This series aims to raise awareness to these lesser known strategists and their contributions to the theory of maritime power. If we are to grasp the growing complexity of human activities at sea, from the sea, and through the sea, we have a professional as well as moral duty to look beyond the horizon and expand our intellectual toolkit to devise new solutions to deal with maritime problems.

This upcoming quest to expand our knowledge of forgotten naval strategists echoes two previous calls made elsewhere in the blogosphere. First, the good folks at Kings of War had an article a few years ago asking which country had produced the greatest strategists. In the comments section, many people jumped into the discussion and took some liberties to mention unsung heroes. Second, James Holmes’ The Naval Diplomat had a series of controversial articles asking whether America still had any naval strategists. These  two articles give us some hints about the way in which a debate about expanding the naval canon should be conducted and we urge you to read them too.

To conclude, submissions must focus on one strategist whose work, for whatever reason, goes unappreciated in current naval debates. As an example, contributions by strategists from Italy, India, China, Brazil, Japan, among other countries, are most welcomed. The challenge is to identify a theoretical contribution, either a specific concept or a broad formulation, that helps us understand maritime strategy. To put it bluntly, we don’t want yet another piece explaining why everyone should read Mahan or Corbett; we know that already. We also don’t want an eulogy for an admiral’s feats in battle. Remember, it’s all about their intellectual contributions to the study of maritime strategy!

Series title: “Forgotten Naval Strategists”
Due Date: September 26
Due to: Nextwar(at)cimsec.org
Running: September 30 – October 5
Format: 500-2000 words

Epic writer Luís Camões salvages his masterpiece "Os Lusíadas" from a shipwreck. Watercolour by Francisco de Resende (1867)
Epic writer Luís de Camões salvages his masterpiece “Os Lusíadas” from a shipwreck. Watercolour by Francisco de Resende (1867)

International Shipping Week – 12 AUG

When you're on a cruise it's important to check for smuggled MiG parts under your place settings.
When you’re on a cruise it’s important to check for smuggled MiG parts in your salad before eating.

While we often discuss danger to international shipping, we more rarely discuss the dangers arising from it. With 90% of global trade crossing the world’s oceans, it is the lynchpin in our world-straddling logistics chain. Like delicious red meat, sea-borne trade makes life better for everyone… but if poorly managed, can lead to great discomfort or chronic illness.

E.Coli

In the juicy steak of global sea-borne trade, there are hidden threats to the health of global security. In the latest example, Panama has charged the crew of the North Korean transport ship Chong Chon Gang with endangering public security for illegally transporting war materials. Registered as a humanitarian aide shipment of sugar from Cuba to North Korea, Panamanian officials found fighter jets, two anti-aircraft missile batteries, 15 jet engines, and nine dissembled rockets underneath 220,000 sacks of brown sugar… and that’s only the first cargo deck. From crew members carrying disease, conventional weapons en-route to unstable regimes, to the potential for nuclear material smuggling, the disease of instability can spread undetected amongst the colossal volume of oceanic traffic.

International Shipping Week

Like a USDA Prime steak, global trade requires both spot inspections and institutional system-wide analysis and control in order to ensure the bad meat doesn’t get through. For the week of 12 August, CIMSEC will ponder the ways in which international shipping is, and should be, processed to better guarantee our safety and security. If you’d like to contribute, please contact Matt Hipple at nextwar@cimsec.org.

Matt Hipple is a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy.  The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity.  They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.

Call for Input: Establishing the 3-D Printing Beachhead

Scott Cheney-Peters and I had the chance to join Ben Kohlmann, of Distruptive Thinkers, and the U.S. Navy Warfare Development Command (NWDC), for a conference call on 3-D printing‘s potential in the fleet. The conver sation, in terms both of research beforehand and its execution, was quite informative for we two amateurs.

A Beachhead… On The Beach:

The challenges of 3-D printing will define the nature of its deployment.  One problem I arrived upon after some research for the talk was the potential issue with stability.  One of the potentially most useful technologies for ships, Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) uses layers of metal dust layered meticulously one-over-the-other as an object is produced.  Despite my earlier enthusiasm for putting 3-D printers on everything – from destroyers to cruiser to potentially even larger ships – some may be inappropriate as platforms for a process that will depend on precision due to their instability. No one wants to destroy 30 hours of work on a pump body with one good roll from sudden heavy seas.  This makes shoreside facilities the most appealing venue for 3-D printing’s initial beachhead.

Critical Questions:

To build a better catalog of stakeholders for NWDC and to get critical technical advice, I’ve been contacting the fleet’s Regional Maintenance Centers and some assorted other support facilities for input.  However, our community here at CIMSEC is just as rich in professional expertise, experience, and insight.  Therefore, we’re hoping to leverage the input of you, our readers, just as we’ve been able to build off the expertise of the others working on this issue.  Here are our questions:

Help us fill in the 3D printing blanks!
                                                            Help us fill in the 3-D printing blanks!

1.) What kind of maintenance problems are most frustrating, that involve mass part replacements or high-fail items?

2.) Which kinds of parts are hardest to find or build?  Are there any small-to-medium-sized parts that you’ve found expensive or difficult to replace? 

3.) If so, what materials are they made out of?  We are particularly interested in mono-material items.

4.) Is there anything the Intermediate Maintenance Activities (IMA) can’t do that 3-D printing might facilitate beyond merely producing new parts?

Scott has brought up other challenges with 3-D printing: the quality and limitations of usable materials, training and operations, and certification of the printed products for use (due to variability of quality).  These administrative and manning details are worth considering as well if you have additional input, concerns, or suggestions.  One particularly helpful IMA head suggested that the Navy’s many CNC-mill operators already have the technical knowledge to operate 3-D printers.  Some of the solutions for figuring out how to best use these technologies as they mature may well involve just realigning existing capabilities.  

Welcome to Sequestration: Making the Business Case

The story of one particularly frustrated program office head reminded me that sequestration will have a real effect on a potential roll out.  While we once may have said, “millions for defense but not one cent for tribute,” we must now pay tribute to our financial constraints.  The objective is to find the greatest savings or capability margin that 3-D printings can give us.

The business case is absolutely critical to this technology being taken seriously.  There will be no grand LCS-style science project.  If the best answer is a Portabee or Replicator 2 reproducing broken belt clips, buckles, and assorted other tertiary gear, so be it.  While we’d love to roll in a 900K duel-laser DMLS machine to print whole pump bodies, the likelihood that such funding is available is marginal… unless the case can be made for it.  Being able to replace GTE turbine-blades on demand would be a nice trick.  If we can certify it for commercial aircraft and human skulls, maybe it won’t be so hard to certify for load-bearing use.  However, clearly laying out the advantages in flexibility, cost, and time that 3-D printing could create over the short- and long-term, and the viable procedures for leveraging those advantages, are the keys to making a prototype deployment of 3-D printers a reality.

Engineers talk to CIMSEC about what they want from 3-D Printing.
          We need to tame our untrammeled enthusiasm with marketable practicality.

 

We look to you, CIMSEC members and friends, to help us push this project forward.  If you know likely interested parties, let me know.  If you have a solid business case, or problem that 3-D printing could solve, write and submit your findings to the editorial board.  Of course, you can always comment below to add to the conversation.  We think 3-D printing is likely to be a valuable step forward in the Navy’s future, and a few non-engineer amateurs can only go so far.  

Matt Hipple is a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy.  The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity.  They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.