New Administration Topic Week

By LT Travis Nicks

The way we buy stuff is broken. The Department of the Navy (DoN) acquisition system buys things we don’t need at prices we can’t pay for products that aren’t complete. What we need is up for debate, so are the prices we pay. However, we have to stop buying incomplete products. When we buy a weapon or platform (ships, aircraft, vehicles, satellites, etc.) without buying its technical data we buy a black box. We own the use of the system but we cannot fix, improve, or optimize; we pull the trigger and see the result. If we need a new result we must buy another expensive black box.

Each major defense contractor has a little fiefdom in Navy acquisitions right now. One has a monopolistic market share in missiles, another in aircraft, etc. There is no competition. The results are the classic follies of oligopoly: quality goes down and prices go up. Mr. Scott O’Neil (SES) served as Executive Director of the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division where he was an engineer and technical manager for 40 years. His immersion in the world of DoD weapons development, contracting, and defense industry interactions led him to determine the precise source of this problem. The root cause of their stranglehold is that each company reserves ownership of the technical drawings and specifications for systems the government supposedly bought and owns the intellectual property (IP) for.ⁱ The result is two-fold. The government has troves of world-class engineers and scientists who are hamstrung by their contractual restriction from access to technical drawings and specifications for systems their employer, DoN, should own outright. Also, the government is unable to take that information and have companies compete to develop the system.

Mr. President-Elect, be our champion and negotiate a better situation. Please sign a law, issue a contracting regulation, or create an executive order that ensures that when acquisition contracts are negotiated the government owns both the IP and the technical information—specifically technical drawings and specifications—associated with the complete system. You’ll break up the anti-capitalist oligopoly and restore competition to lower cost, improve quality, and speed up development.

Travis Nicks is a nuclear submarine officer serving at the Pentagon. He is focused on finding precise fixes to complex problems. LT Nicks is interested in cyber policy and personnel performance issues. The views herein are his alone and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy, or any other organization.

i. O’Neil, Scott. Personal interview. 18 Jan 2017.

Featured Image: A Zumwalt-class destroyer under construction at Bath Iron Works. (New England Boating)

New Administration Topic Week

By Dr. Sebastian Bruns

The incoming administration needs to know that the U.S. Navy is a forward-deployable and ready tool of statecraft for the United States. It builds on a long tradition and utilizes the opportunities afforded by geography, the maritime domain, and international law to engage with allies, conduct naval diplomacy, deter crises, and provide options towards favorable outcomes in a conflict. The spectrum of engagement is vast and principally allows the new administration to shape the global environment in ways that the Air Force, the Army, or soft power cannot – although the Navy should always be seen as part of a toolbox, not a one-size-fits-all tool. The U.S. Navy can train, exercise, coordinate, and operate together with partners using standardized and scalable methods. America, the global sea power, needs reliable, ready, intellectually-embraced naval power.

Dr. Sebastian Bruns heads the Center for Maritime Strategy & Security at the Institute for Security Policy University of Kiel, Germany. Prior to that, he served then-Rep. Todd Young (R, Ind.) as Congressional Fellow for defense and military policy. He is the editor of the “Routledge Handbook of Naval Strategy and Security” (London 2016).

Featured Image: DA NANG, Vietnam (Oct. 2, 2016) – Sailors from the Arleigh-Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain (DDG 56) participate in a damage control professional exchange and practical with sailors from Vietnam People’s navy during Naval Engagement Activity (NEA) Vietnam 2016.  (U.S. Navy photo by Ens. Meghan Mariano)

New Administration Topic Week

By Richard Mosier

The Soviet Union was officially dissolved on December 26, 1991, leaving the U.S. Navy with no near-peer maritime threat for the past 25 years. The current generation of naval officers has grown up in an environment in which the U.S. Navy has been focused on strike operations in a relatively benign, third-world threat environment. In that environment, the surface navy has focused overwhelmingly on fleet defense and net-centric operations, with little need to grapple with concepts for the offense against a maritime near-peer.

Multiple nations now pose threats that require new consideration of offensive concepts such as distributed lethality. The U.S. Navy now faces the challenge of relearning lessons learned in the 1970s and 1980s when faced with the threat of the Soviet Navy. Offensive naval operations against a near-peer, then, now, and in the future will have to give the offense and the defense equal emphasis. The offense emphasizes the element of surprise that is achieved through deception, counter- surveillance, and counter-targeting tactics. The fleet will have to relearn how to operate in EMCON, with all task force RF emitters in standby, and still maintain the tactical advantage of superior situational awareness.

In the past 25 years, national, theater, and Navy intelligence, surveillance, and targeting capabilities have dramatically improved in surveillance area coverage, near real-time contact reporting, and shore-based all-source correlation and fusion. The challenge is to leverage the impressive capabilities of off board systems to achieve situational awareness when an offensive task force is transiting in EMCON. This will require some sacrifice of jealously guarded institutional equities. It also will require the Navy develop and field shipboard capabilities for the integration of this near real-time, off-board, and force sensor information on surface combatants such as DDGs to realize the potential for superior situation awareness and from that, win tactical decisions. It will require the Navy recognize Information Operations Warfare as a warfare area that requires OPNAV sponsorship and the development of warfare specialists and supporting systems that are essential for the planning and execution of deception, counter-surveillance, and counter-targeting operations that enable offensive mission success.

Richard Mosier is a former naval aviator, intelligence analyst at ONI, OSD/DIA SES 4, and systems engineer specializing in Information Warfare.

Featured Image: RED SEA (Dec. 17, 2015) Aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) transits the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb. Guided-missile destroyers USS Ramage (DDG 61), front, and USS Gonzalez (DDG 66) transits the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb. Guided-missile destroyer USS Bulkeley (DDG 84) transits the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class J. R. Pacheco/Released)

New Administration Topic Week

By Bryan McGrath

The incoming administration must grasp two things about the U.S. Navy as it assumes power. The first is that the overarching purpose for the U.S. Navy is to guarantee global freedom of the seas. Freedom of the seas is the irreducible argument for trade, upon which both the security and the prosperity of this nation is based. No other element of American military power is as closely connected to the nation’s prosperity.

Secondly, the Administration needs to know that the fleet that guarantees freedom of the seas must be large enough to both deter war and to prosecute it. However, the composition of the fleet that deters war and the fleet that conducts war is not necessarily the same. Our present fleet does not make this distinction, and it leaves us less prepared for both deterrence and warfighting.

Bryan McGrath is the Managing Director of The FerryBridge Group LLC, and the Assistant Director of Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower.

Featured Image: SUBIC BAY, Republic of the Philippines (Feb. 11, 2013) – USS Stockdale (DDG 106), a US Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer rests moored in Subic Bay, Republic of the Philippines for a port visit. Stockdale is a part of the Nimitz Strike Group Surface Action Group and is currently transiting the Western Pacific Ocean. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class David Hooper/Released)