[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 116-60]
UPDATE ON NAVY AND MARINE CORPS
READINESS IN THE PACIFIC IN THE
AFTERMATH OF RECENT MISHAPS
__________
JOINT HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES
meeting jointly with the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
of the
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
FEBRUARY 5, 2020
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
41-478 WASHINGTON : 2021
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES
JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut, Chairman
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia
JIM COOPER, Tennessee K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey MIKE GALLAGHER, Wisconsin
SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts JACK BERGMAN, Michigan
FILEMON VELA, Texas MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
GILBERT RAY CISNEROS, Jr., VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri
California PAUL COOK, California
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama
JARED F. GOLDEN, Maine TRENT KELLY, Mississippi
ELAINE G. LURIA, Virginia, Vice
Chair
ANTHONY BRINDISI, New York
Phil MacNaughton, Professional Staff Member
Dave Sienicki, Professional Staff Member
Sean Falvey, Clerk
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
JOHN GARAMENDI, California, Chairman
TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
ANDY KIM, New Jersey, Vice Chair AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia
KENDRA S. HORN, Oklahoma JOE WILSON, South Carolina
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania ROB BISHOP, Utah
JASON CROW, Colorado MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
XOCHITL TORRES SMALL, New Mexico MO BROOKS, Alabama
ELISSA SLOTKIN, Michigan ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas JACK BERGMAN, Michigan
DEBRA A. HAALAND, New Mexico
Melanie Harris, Professional Staff Member
John Muller, Professional Staff Member
Sean Falvey, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Courtney, Hon. Joe, a Representative from Connecticut, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces................. 1
Garamendi, Hon. John, a Representative from California, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Readiness...................................... 4
Lamborn, Hon. Doug, a Representative from Colorado, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Readiness.............................. 4
Wittman, Hon. Robert J., a Representative from Virginia, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces......... 2
WITNESSES
Brown, VADM Richard A., USN, Commander, Naval Surface Forces,
U.S. Pacific Fleet 5
Rudder, LtGen Steven R., USMC, Deputy Commandant for Aviation,
United States Marine Headquarters 7
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Brown, VADM Richard A........................................ 48
Courtney, Hon. Joe........................................... 41
Garamendi, Hon. John......................................... 45
Lamborn, Hon. Doug........................................... 47
Rudder, LtGen Steven R....................................... 59
Wittman, Hon. Robert J....................................... 43
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
Mr. Conaway.................................................. 71
Mr. Kim...................................................... 71
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. Cisneros................................................. 76
Mr. Kim...................................................... 76
Mr. Wittman.................................................. 75
UPDATE ON NAVY AND MARINE CORPS READINESS IN THE PACIFIC IN THE
AFTERMATH OF RECENT MISHAPS
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces, Meeting
Jointly with the Subcommittee on Readiness,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, February 5, 2020.
The subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 2:31 p.m., in
room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Joe Courtney
(chairman of the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection
Forces) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE COURTNEY, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
CONNECTICUT, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION
FORCES
Mr. Courtney. Good afternoon, everyone. Today's joint
subcommittee hearing of Seapower and Projection Forces and the
Readiness Subcommittee is actually the fifth in a continuation
of joint subcommittee oversight since 2017 that have
specifically examined maritime mishaps in the Pacific and the
underlying systemic readiness issues that were a major
contributory cause of those catastrophic events.
Since the gut-wrenching losses of 17 sailors from the USS
Fitzgerald and the USS John McCain in June, the latter in June
2017, these subcommittees have been the public forum to review
and act on the Navy's Comprehensive Review, Strategic Readiness
Review, and the Government Accountability Office, GAO's,
studies on the manning, training, and operational shortcomings.
As the USS Fitzgerald returns to sea this week for the
first time since the collision, today's hearing is an
opportunity for the Navy to provide an update to Congress and
the Nation on how they have addressed these issues and how they
have implemented the reforms needed to prevent them from
happening again.
Today's hearing also follows a tragic Marine Corps aviation
mishap in 2018. This accident, in which an FA-18 Hornet [jet]
and a KC-130H [extended-range tanker] collided in mid-air, has
striking similarities to the earlier collision between aircraft
in the same two squadrons that took place in 2017. Like the
ship collisions in 2017 which exposed serious shortfalls in
certifications of key operational training and navigation,
seamanship, and engineering, this incident has revealed
inadequate flight hours, night-time training, and equipment
maintenance that were, at a minimum, contributory causes to the
mid-air collision. The most recent mishap killed 5 of the 6 air
crewmen involved, and our thoughts and prayers are with the
families of these Marines just as they remain with the families
of the 17 sailors killed in the 2 ship collisions.
I know that our sailors and Marines that are forward
deployed to Japan represent some of our best and brightest.
Each of us recognize the role these men and women play in being
the tip of the spear in one of the most active regions in the
world. These men and women in uniform deal with longer hours,
less time at home, higher operational tempos, and complex
multinational strategies. Therefore, it is imperative that both
the Navy and Marine Corps get this right and balance these high
operational desires with requisite readiness systems and needs.
The services owe deep analysis and critical examination of
their readiness issues, whether it be training, maintenance, or
proficiency, and Congress owes diligent and persistent
oversight.
The Navy has recognized that it is challenged by widespread
institutional readiness issues. It is now proactive towards
accepting responsibility and executing solutions at all
leadership levels. They have established new governing bodies
and have made notable progress in correcting the nearly 100
issues identified by the Comprehensive Review, the Strategic
Readiness Review, and multiple GAO reports.
These corrections aren't superficial. They represent large,
systemic, and deep programmatic changes across manning,
training, budgeting, and operations. While I look forward to
the Navy's update today on the progress, I am also encouraged
by the Marine Corps appointment of an independent Consolidated
Disposition Authority that will have broad authority in
investigating command climate, training, and material
readiness.
As the Marine Corps grapples with these complex problems, I
urge them to learn from the Navy's initial incidents and
subsequent actions. Both these readiness reforms and Congress'
oversight are iterative processes. It is my sincere hope that
through continued oversight, further hearings, and robust
dialogue with the services, we can continue to eliminate these
readiness difficulties, ensuring that our service members come
home safely.
And I now would yield to my colleague, the ranking member
of Seapower, Mr. Wittman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Courtney can be found in the
Appendix on page 41.]
STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT J. WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
VIRGINIA, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND
PROJECTION FORCES
Mr. Wittman. Well, I want to thank Chairman Courtney for
yielding, and I want to also thank him for having an enduring
interest in our naval forces readiness. Joe, thank you so much
for that focus and that determination to make sure we get to
the root of these things, and to make sure that changes are
made so they are long-lasting.
You know, I am particularly heartbroken over the loss of
life associated with Navy surface forces and Marine Corps
aviation forces. All were tragic. All were preventable. All
have several common threads underlying the principal issues. In
the end, the lack of senior leadership, inattention to the
apparent problems facing the respective units, and an inability
of the operators to discern the dangers they were in all
contributed to the same tragic results.
The Marine Corps is particularly troubling. The KC-130J
collision with the Hornet aircraft at night over the sea of
Japan was an accident waiting to happen. Months earlier, the
squadron commander wrote to his superiors and indicated,
quotes: Everyone believes us to be underresourced and
undermanned.
The III MEF [Marine Expeditionary Force] commanding
general, Lieutenant General Clardy, responded to the accident
and indicated the Marine Corps, in his words, had a chronic
history of unconstrained tasking and underresourcing, creating
a culture of complacency.
He went on to further indicate that his Marine aircraft
wing faced significant challenges in manning, maintaining, and
training its squadrons. The conclusion of this accident rings
particularly close to the heart as they are eerily similar to
the same outcomes associated with the McCain/Fitzgerald
collisions.
In those two efforts, the Secretary of Navy's Readiness
Review concluded, leaders in organizations began to lose sight
of what right looked like and to accept these altered
conditions and reduced readiness standards as the new normal.
In this review, the report further concluded that, over time,
the Navy's must-do, wartime culture was adopted for peacetime,
as long-term readiness and capability were sacrificed for
immediate mission accomplishment.
What I thought was a defining, seminal moment for the
Secretary of the Navy, a moment that I understood included an
assessment of the Marine Corps, was instead somewhat fleeting,
and lessons learned still not fully adopted. We can do better,
and we must do better.
For the surface forces, we need to adopt a more rigorous
accessions training evolution, similar to that of the merchant
marine. We need to ensure more junior officer seamanship
training. Our enlisted training needs to be systematically
reviewed to eliminate outdated training. And our sailors, I
think, are the most perceptive measures of that. They know what
they need, and we want to make sure that it is modern and
keeping with today's challenges.
Our afloat manning needs to be significantly improved. Our
basing and maintenance processes need to be aligned, including
modernizing facilities. We need to step out of our comfort
zones and ensure the manning, training, and equipping of our
forces is maximized for both efficiency and effort.
As to the Marine Corps, I think that we need to do some
deep soul-searching and ensure that we have the right readiness
at the right time. This balance is difficult to achieve, but we
should never sacrifice the safety of our Marines upon whose
backs our Nation is carried.
Again, I appreciate the chairman for having this important
hearing, and I yield back the balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the
Appendix on page 43.]
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Wittman.
And, again, you have been part of the prior four briefings
and hearings we had as many of the other members here today.
Again, the Readiness Subcommittee is, again, our colleagues
here today and yield to the chairman of the subcommittee, Mr.
Garamendi, from California.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN GARAMENDI, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
CALIFORNIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
Mr. Garamendi. I thank you, Mr. Courtney. I am going to
shorten my remarks and ask that it be put into the record. Much
of what I would say you have already said, both you and your
ranking member. But I do want to thank you and the work of the
staff, this being our committees working together over the past
2 years on the issues before us today.
And I want to also state that we continue to honor and
remember the 17 sailors and 6 Marines who died in the tragic
surface ship and aviation collisions in 2017 and 2018. Our
thoughts remain with their loved ones and their friends.
Just a quick thing, there are three things we need to do
here. First, we need to be absolutely certain that these things
don't happen again. Preventable accidents, got to get on top of
that.
Second, that the decisions made by senior personnel, senior
command, be wise decisions, as has already been stated by my
two colleagues.
And, finally, that we continue our oversight.
I ought to also just very quickly thank two organizations--
the Government Accountability Office and ProPublica--for
bringing to light many of the issues that were hidden, were not
obvious. Both of them have done an enormous service to the men
and women in uniform as well as to the general public, and
certainly to us.
With that, I yield back, and ask that my full comments be
in the record.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Garamendi can be found in
the Appendix on page 45.]
Mr. Courtney. No objection. Thank you, John.
I now yield to the ranking member, Mr. Lamborn, from
Colorado, on Readiness.
STATEMENT OF HON. DOUG LAMBORN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM COLORADO,
RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Chairman Courtney. I would like to
thank you and Ranking Member Wittman for your continued
collaboration with Chairman Garamendi and me on these critical
issues.
Many factors contribute to military readiness, but it seems
to me that it really comes down to the basics--have we given
our men and women in uniform the right training and equipment
for the jobs we ask them to do, and is that equipment properly
maintained? With all of the technical advancements in modern
warfare, we still have to focus on blocking and tackling.
Last week, the four of us up here who have just spoken
embarked on the USS Eisenhower, and I was impressed by the
discipline required by our sailors and aviators to safely
conduct carrier operations. The flight deck is a dangerous
place with moving aircraft and heavy equipment and flammable
liquids everywhere, and the ship is powered by a nuclear power
plant. There is good reason we have such high standards.
So that brings me to the purpose of this hearing and the
thing that concerns me the most. When we are moving so fast
that we lose focus on the fundamentals, it has real-world
consequences that are borne by our service members and their
families. The common threads in the challenges confronting our
surface fleet and aviation forces are culture and a focus on
short-term operational outputs.
It is concerning to me that the 2017 surface warfare
mishaps in the Western Pacific were at the very tip of the
spear for our Navy. The Marine Corps F/A-18D squadron that
experienced the December 2018 mishap was scheduled to
participate in a large military exercise that was canceled
right before the mishap. It is unclear to me that the unit was
prepared for an operation on that scale.
So, as we proceed today, I would ask our witnesses to
highlight where their services are focused on changing culture
and thoughts they have on how to effectively measure that
progress. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lamborn can be found in the
Appendix on page 47.]
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Lamborn.
And now, again, it is my honor to introduce our witnesses
here today. Vice Admiral--sorry--Vice Admiral Richard Brown,
who is no stranger to this committee. Again, you actually
joined us about a year or so ago on this very issue and again,
our commander of Pacific Fleet.
And you are joined here today by Lieutenant General Steven
Rudder of the U.S. Marine Corps, Deputy Commandant for Aviation
from the United States Marine Headquarters.
Again, you have been with us over the years at budget
hearings and many others.
So thank you to both of you for joining us.
And, again, Mr.--Admiral Brown, you are going to lead off,
so the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF VADM RICHARD A. BROWN, USN, COMMANDER, NAVAL
SURFACE FORCES, U.S. PACIFIC FLEET
Admiral Brown. Thank you, sir. Chairman Courtney, Ranking
Member Wittman, Chairman Garamendi, and Ranking Member Lamborn,
and distinguished members of the Seapower and Projection Forces
and Readiness Subcommittees. On behalf of the United States
Navy, thank you for the opportunity to join you to discuss the
readiness of our surface forces.
My east coast counterpart, Rear Admiral Roy Kitchener, and
I have the authorities, the responsibilities, and more
importantly, the accountability for the generation of ready
surface forces. Our number one priority is current readiness,
and we are directly responsible to the four-star fleet
commanders for the manning, training, and equipping of the
surface force.
Bottom line, the surface type commanders provide combat-
ready ships and battle-minded crews to our numbered fleet
commanders. During my testimony today I want to reinforce that
the Navy has moved and is continuing to move with urgency to
ensure the funding, policies, and sustainable processes
required for long-term success are in place. I have three
specific highlights.
First, there is one unified standard for ensuring
readiness. Our manning, training, and equipping objectives are
unambiguous. We only deploy ships that have the required
manning, are fully certified, and have the necessary material
readiness in place. Commanders at all levels embrace the
standards and their responsibility for attaining such.
My job, as a surface type commander, is to help our
commanding officers attain these standards and, where
necessary, break down barriers. Should an unusual or urgent
case that requires a deviation arise, that approval authority
resides solely with the four-star fleet commanders.
Second, in response to the Strategic Readiness Review and
the Comprehensive Review findings, we implemented compliance
measures to break the normalization of deviance and impose risk
management. We undertook measures to enhance the development,
assessment, and sustainment of proficiency. Concurrently, we
reestablished firebreaks by more effectively balancing
maintenance, training, and operations.
The culture of excellence we are forging today embodies the
standards as the minimum rather than the goal. While not
declaring mission complete, over the last 2 years, the pace of
enhancements and their initial results are cause for optimism.
Lastly, we are the premier surface force in the world,
second to none, that controls the seas and provides the Nation
with combat naval power when and where needed. Type commanders
and resource sponsors are committed to providing our surface
force with the manning, the training, and the equipment needed
to own the fight. While combat readiness remains my highest
priority, we will continue to enhance mariner and warfighting
skills training, we will deliver warfighting capabilities
essential to the future fight, and we will initiate actions to
prepare individuals and watch teams to fight and win.
Remaining the world's premier surface force requires
collaboration at all levels. Although we have made significant
progress that paves the way for long-term success, our efforts
will not cease. Never being satisfied with past successes
fosters an unrelenting drive to improve. That is the hallmark
of premier organizations. With the continued support of
Congress and our commitment to excellence, I am confident in
the Navy's ability to deploy combat-ready ships with battle-
minded crews when called upon to do so.
I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today
and greatly appreciate your continued support. I look forward
to your questions and the opportunity to discuss the specific
actions we are taking to strengthen our surface Navy. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Brown can be found in
the Appendix on page 48.]
Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you, Admiral.
And, General Rudder, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF LTGEN STEVEN R. RUDDER, USMC, DEPUTY COMMANDANT
FOR AVIATION, UNITED STATES MARINE HEADQUARTERS
General Rudder. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman
Courtney, Ranking Member Wittman, Chairman Garamendi, and
Ranking Member Lamborn, all the members of the committee, and
your staff behind you. Thank you for the opportunity to appear
here today.
As you are aware, the Marine Corps title 10 [10 U.S.C.
8063] responsibility is to be the Nation's expeditionary force
in readiness. We are charged and expected to always be the most
ready when the Nation is least ready.
This responsibility is at the very core and identity of the
Marines. As Deputy Commandant for Aviation, my focus continues
to be readiness for combat, as I have told you for the past 3
years, and with your help, we are making progress. We are still
modernizing, and most importantly, we are focusing on the
maintainer, those Marines and sailors who work on our aircraft.
As a testament to congressional support and our efforts,
Marine aviation readiness has continued to improve since
November of 2017. It continues to be our primary effort,
especially with our TACAIR [tactical air] community and as
evident by the MC80 [mission-capable 80 percent] focus of last
year. So, again, thank you for that support.
In 2019, Marine aviation executed 78 operations. We were
part of 88 major security cooperation events with partners and
allies, participated in 170 major exercises. Today, there are
over 19,000 aviation Marines forward stationed, 17,000 forward
deployed, totaling 19 percent of Active Duty force forward
engaged in 60 countries around the world.
Our achievements, however, have not come without their
share of tragedy and hard lessons learned. On December 6, 2018,
the naval aviation community absorbed a devastating loss when a
Marine F/A-18D Hornet from VMFA-242 [Marine All-Weather Fighter
Attack Squadron 242] collided with a KC-130J from VMGR-152
[Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 152] during a
training event over the Pacific Ocean 50 miles off the coast of
Japan.
Both squadrons were based out of Iwakuni on mainland Japan
on the 12th Marine Air Group, 1st Marine Air Wing, III MEF. Six
Marines were lost. All these Marines served their country with
honor, and they will never be forgotten.
We cannot change what has happened. What we can do is use
this tragedy to grow and change our organization, make these
operations and all operations safer. Such initiatives will be
the legacy of these six Marines.
On September 23rd, 2019, the Assistant Commandant of the
Marine Corps appointed a Consolidated Disposition Authority to
further review the findings of the command investigation into
this mishap. The CDA, as we call it, is an independent senior
commander who will provide a comprehensive review of the
investigation and all the facts surrounding it.
The CDA may order a range of actions to include further
investigation and/or administrative or disciplinary actions in
accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice. However,
I can assure you that, upon completion of the CDA, our first
priority will be to inform all the families of our lost Marines
on the relevant results of our findings and provide
transparency.
We still have much work to do to ensure that our aviation
Marines and sailors are among the best trained and equipped
forces in the world. I am confident that we are headed in the
right direction, and with your continued support, we will
achieve our aims.
I am here today to inform you of the steps we have taken so
far to increase our readiness levels and to make our operation
safety. I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Rudder can be found in
the Appendix on page 59.]
Mr. Courtney. Thank you to both of you. And again I just
want to ask a couple quick questions and open it up to other
members.
Admiral Brown, last time you testified, it was sort of at
the, you know, sort of the early stages of implementing some of
the changes from the different reviews, some of which were done
internally by the Navy, some of which Congress actually
codified. I think it was the 2018 NDAA [National Defense
Authorizing Act] that Senator McCain advocated very strongly
for.
And you actually cited a couple examples of where, you
know, this problem of folks at the lower levels, you know,
being concerned about readiness problems, not sort of making
its way up the food chain and that the decisionmakers, you
know, never had the opportunity to, you know, pull the safety
break, as Admiral Richardson described it when he testified
before this committee.
And, again, I think you cited some specific examples of how
that change is already starting to occur with a couple of
instances. It has been about a year or so, and I was just
wondering if you could sort of update us in terms of, you know,
again, whether or not that sort of extra sort of safety catch
or safety break is still working the way I think everybody was
hoping for?
Admiral Brown. Yes, sir. I believe so. And I will give you
a couple of examples here in a minute. The real thing that we
did and I talked about in--it was June of 2018--is that--and
then CNO [Chief of Naval Operations] Richardson was here
testifying at the same time--is, we established the necessary
firebreaks between force generation and force employment.
It was a true statement that, back in 2016 and 2017, we
were evaluating operations over basically everything else,
especially in the FDNF [Forward Deployed Naval Forces] world.
The firebreaks weren't there. So we have codified, through
instruction and through directives, to put those firebreaks in
place.
Two things, the first one is the integrated readiness
instruction that was signed off by the Chief of Naval
Operations, and that lists what the minimum training standards
are for each particular operation. As you can imagine, if we
are sending a ship up to fleet week in San Diego or in San
Francisco, the training requirements would not be as robustly
needed as a ship that was getting forward deployed as part of a
rotational force.
The second thing is, my ADCOM, administrative command,
voice is now very large, where perhaps it was not the case in
years past.
So there is an insatiable demand for naval forces across
all the combatant commanders. We are the most visible presence
of the United States. Whenever we are not somewhere, that
creates a sucking vacuum that then is filled in by somebody
else. That said, not everything that we do is national tasking
or phase zero tasking. So there must be a balance between that
insatiable demand for forces and the maintenance and the
training and the certification.
When there are discussions about using ships that are not
fully certified, that is when my voice gets very loud and the
four-stars listen now. And I will give you an example, is a
destroyer was being talked about being used for a particular
mission in FDNF. She was not basic phase complete, and we
raised the red flag, and the discussion stopped. So that is
very promising.
Mr. Courtney. General Rudder, again, you described the
Consolidated Disposition Authority review in your--or the new
review that is going to be taking place, and again I appreciate
the fact that the families are going to get the first look at
it when it is available. Can you give us some idea of the
timing of, you know, roughly, you know, when you think that is
going to be complete? And obviously our committee will want to,
at some point, also have an opportunity to sink our teeth in
it, and again that is the Marine Corps plan.
General Rudder. I don't have the precise analysis. They
are, you know, as we speak, locked in a room still going
through the final phases of this thing, but I envision in the
next few months that we will have something presented to the
Commandant for his decision.
Mr. Courtney. Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
witnesses joining us today.
Admiral Brown, I understand the Navy has a requirement for
its surface ships to be at 95 percent of required manning, and
then within each of the specialty areas on board the ship to be
at 92 percent of required manning to make sure that the full
complement is on board the ship. It appears, though, that
looking at the quarterly report showing deficiencies to
Congress, it appears to me that there are still issues with
basic and intermediate training. So the manning needs there and
the skill sets necessary to meet that, not just the 95 percent
overall but the 92 percent, are still pretty deficient.
My wife is a schoolteacher. This is her 40th year of
teaching school, and her school system requires that she give
her students a grade as they are in the classroom and doing
things and determining whether or not they are meeting
expectations or not. Give me the Navy's grade on where you are
with these requirements for the surface fleet and give me a
little reason why you believe that grade is a just grade.
Admiral Brown. Yes, sir. I would give us a B-minus.
Mr. Wittman. Okay.
Admiral Brown. C-plus to a B-minus, for a couple of
reasons. The first is the resource sponsor does a pretty good
job of buying to what the requirement is. We buy about 98
percent of the requirement. That establishes our billets
authorized. But if we wanted all the ships to be at 92 percent
fit and 95 percent filled throughout their entire cycle, the
36-month cycle of the OFRP [Optimized Fleet Response Plan], we
would actually have to buy 120 percent of the requirement to
account for the friction. That is the reason why I give us a B-
minus or a C-plus, is that we have done a very good job over
the last couple of years, about paying for the total ownership
cost of manpower, but we really haven't bought any--all of it.
Because it is a balance, you know. We have to balance the
portfolio across the--across all the things that we need to do.
That said, we strive in the Pacific Fleet--and I have been
meeting this since the middle of last year--is to get the ships
to 92, 95 at the beginning of the advanced phase of training.
That is the Surface Warfare Advanced Tactical Training. Then we
keep the ships there through the integrated phase of training
and through the deployment.
And then we do not allow them to degrade very significantly
while they are in sustainment. That is what gets me to the B.
And we were not doing that back in 2016 and 2017.
That said, the last point I will make is I have actually
done a study on what is the required fit to have the right
number of watch standards in place when they are in the basic
phase, and that is about 88 percent. So, if a ship is running
at about 88 percent fit, they are usually around 92 percent
fill, and they have the right people in place for the most part
during the basic phase.
Mr. Wittman. I appreciate you pointing that out. If you
look at the different measures about where the Navy is and how
many sailors it is short to get to the 120 so you can meet 95
and 92, somewhere between 6,000, maybe even the upper end of
9,000 sailors. So, obviously, we have to be able to get to that
point if we are going to get where we need to be with the Navy.
You talk a lot about the training aspects of that. And
listen, there has been some significant advances in officer
training. The problem, though, is, what are we doing on the
enlisted side. You know, when our sailors get out of basic
training and go to C School, as they call it, and the training
that they get there, it still seems the schoolhouse training is
somewhat insufficient. If you look at training on more modern
teaching aids, more modern systems, and as you see in the
McCain and Fitzgerald collision, you have sailors that moved
from one ship to another, dissimilar systems. You know we have
lots of surface ships out there, and as we modernize them,
unfortunately there are different systems on board. So, you
think you know a navigation system, you get to a different
ship, and it is very, very different. So, give me a reflection
on where we are with enlisted training, what you are doing to
make sure there is a modern training regime here, that the
schoolhouse training is where it needs to be. I understand when
they get to the fleet, they can learn those ship systems, but
you got to go to the fleet with that basic understanding that
comes from the schoolhouse training.
Admiral Brown. Yes, sir, I agree. And we are doing it, we
are achieving that through our Ready, Relevant Learning
processes. We are delivering modernized training as we take
individual rates and we transition them from the old way that
we would do A-School and C-School to now Ready, Relevant
Learning, and the real goal is to, number one, modernize the
training delivery so it is not death by PowerPoints.
Mr. Wittman. Right.
Admiral Brown. Number two is to give the right training at
the right time. And the example that I will use is Aegis FC
[Fire Controlmen] training. We would literally give a master-
level degree of training to Aegis Fire Controlmen that would
take anywhere up to a year to 18 months. And by the time that
they get to the ship, they may only have a year and a half left
on their contract. That really wasn't the right thing. What we
need to do is give them the training that they need for that
first sea tour. And then when we say, hey, that sailor is
really sharp and committed for another sea tour or the rest of
that sea tour, then we will give them the additional training.
We are doing that through STAVE, which is the Surface
Training and Advanced Virtual Environment, where we are
actually modernizing the delivery methods. I am very excited
about this. The surface force actually led the way, beginning
in 2013, when we developed the quartermaster training
continuum. That was the genesis for Ready, Relevant Learning.
Mr. Wittman. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would
like to come back in the next round and ask some more
questions. Thanks.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Garamendi.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Where do we start
here? Let's talk about rest periods. One of the problems that
was noted was an insufficient amount of rest. I noticed when I
try to take a delayed flight out of Dulles, chances are that
the crew isn't going to meet the rest requirements, and then
they got to go find another crew. So, gentlemen, if you will
talk about that, the circadian rhythm, how that fits into it,
what you are doing about that.
Admiral Brown. Yes, sir, from the surface force
perspective, that was one of the first things that we went
after. In November of 2017, a circadian rhythm watch bill
rotation instruction was put out and codified for the surface
force. Circadian watch bill rotations is more about shipboard
routine than it is actually about the number of watch sections
that you have. The example that I use is: If a particular watch
section is in port and starboard--so you stand watch for 6
hours, and then you are off for 6 hours--typically the OS's
[operations specialists] in combat are in that section. If you
run a shipwide evolution in the morning, you crush the mid-
watch folks. So, it is more about shipboard routine.
So general quarters training we would do in the afternoon
when those mid-watch folks are already on watch.
We are actually tracking and monitoring our progress over
the last 2 years of how we have implemented that in the force.
We do that through the ATG [Afloat Training Group] training.
There is actually crew endurance checklists that are now filled
out by the crew and the ATG trainers, and that actually goes
into our training system, and it feeds into the score that the
ship receives for the basic phase of training.
The other way that we are monitoring this is through the
Afloat Bridge Resource Management workshops with the post major
command CO [commanding officer] mentors, who are specifically
trained in fatigue management by my human factors engineers
that are embedded on my staff.
The other way, there is another pulse point that happens
twice in a cycle which are through the afloat safety surveys,
where they are actually measuring crew fatigue. So, we are
moving in the right direction. I am not calling mission
complete because I just sent out a tasker to both coasts where
I want to go start asking very detailed, deep questions to the
ships to make sure we have this right.
Mr. Garamendi. General. General Rudder.
General Rudder. We have got several instructions that talk
about sleep and rest, and, you know, we have rules on what
rest--uninterrupted rest is required before you can plan,
brief, and fly a mission. Where it gets a little bit more
nondescriptive is when you desynchronize your day and night
schedules. So, for those extended periods, which as they call
it in the CNAF [Commander, Naval Air Forces] manual, it talks
about having 4 weeks to desync yourself, synchronize yourself
into a night schedule. We do this for combat operations where
in some cases, if you were flying in OAR [Operation Atlantic
Resolve], you are flying in OEF [Operation Enduring Freedom],
then--and you were on a night page, as we call it, night
schedule, you would be flying nights for 6 months straight,
potentially. And then it would take you a while to kind of get
your body in there.
For the lesser exercises, where you are--if you are going
to do one night mission, then you can come off a day schedule,
if you will, and fly that one night mission. Where it gets a
little more complicated is, how many night missions are you
going to do that gets you into a desynchronization period? This
all goes back to our flight surgeon, the commanding officer,
and as we lead into an exercise, how long does he give his
aircrew a time to synchronize themselves into that night
schedule and how they do that? And that is really when you get
into the 3 or 4 days as the exercise--3 or 4 or 5 days as the
exercise was in this particular event that we are talking about
today, giving 2 or 3 days in there was right on the edge of
what the flight surgeon and the commanding officer thought they
needed for those particular aircrew to sync themselves into a
night schedule.
Mr. Garamendi. There is also the question related to this
is the amount of training and specifically for night flying,
and apparently that was lacking in the 2018 situation. So,
there was a question of not--insufficient rest as well as
insufficient training for night refueling. Is that the case?
And you have solved that problem?
General Rudder. The qualifications that--so, for the
qualifications for that particular crew to go out that--to do
that mission, they had met the qualifications to do that
mission--the qualifications to do that. You could make a case,
because of their low flight hours in the 3 or 4 months
preceding that, they were not as proficient to do the missions
as they should. So, yes, they were not as proficient. Were they
qualified for tanking, and had they flown night, and were they
qualified to fly night mission? And if you look at the data,
they were qualified but not as proficient as we would like to
see.
Mr. Garamendi. So, proficiency comes with training hours--
flight hours and the like. It was thought at the time that
there were insufficient training, insufficient hours of flight.
Have you resolved that issue? Are you providing sufficient
training in the air, in training facilities, and the like?
General Rudder. So, broadly speaking, within the F-18
community, their flight time has increased dramatically as
long--as well as their readiness. For this particular squadron,
242, up through 2017, they actually, although they lagged in
some cases behind in the numbers of hours per pilot, their
readiness was at the same level as those nondeployed units back
in the States.
We tend to take the squadron that was in OIF--OIR
[Operation Inherent Resolve], excuse me, off the table because
they were flying two or three times the amount of hours, and
they skew the data sometimes in our real readiness. In that
particular squadron, what we saw in 2018 is, they were behind,
sometimes ahead, as they went through 2018, but as they
deployed to Australia before they went into this exercise, that
is where we saw a dip in the hours. So ProPublica, as their
data suggests, is correct. I mean, leading into the flight that
they took there for the preceding 3 or 4 months and what the
commanding officer was worried about, are those months where
they were in Australia, trying to get back from Australia. That
is when they had a dip in readiness and a dip in hours.
Mr. Garamendi. One quick question for both of you is that
it appears as though the commanding officer, certainly with
regard to the Marine Corps problem, or accident, indicated
through the--up to the chain of command that there were
problems, and that those problems were serious, that they
needed attention, and the chain of command did not provide the
necessary time to correct the problems. Could you both speak to
that issue and give us some indication whether this remains a
problem? In other words, the chain of command not paying
attention to information coming from lower down the command?
Admiral Brown, why don't you start, and we will give General
Rudder a short break.
Admiral Brown. Yes, sir. It is a great question, and one of
the things that we did in response to the tragedy of 2017 is
directly opened up the communication from our commanding
officers directly to me as their type commander. They do that
with a 90-day letter that they send me 3 months after they take
command, and that letter comes to me, comes straight into my
inbox. It is not chopped by their commodores. It is not chopped
by their strike group commanders. It comes straight to me. I
typically answer that letter within 72 hours, but I staff it
all out. Because the commanding officers, at first there was a
little trepidation: Is this going to be a micromanagement tool?
They figured it out. This was a barrier removal tool. Because
they identify in these letters specific things that are holding
them back from doing their job as the CO, and when I get it, I
send it out to my staff, but not only do I send it out to the
staff, sometimes I send it up to the OPNAV [Office of the Chief
of Naval Operations] staff. I have sent it over to Tom Moore at
NAVSEA [Naval Sea Systems Command] to get after issues.
The other thing that we have instituted--and that has been
very effective, and the COs love that now.
The other thing that we have instituted was phase
transition briefs. So, when a ship is coming out of the
maintenance phase, the commanding officer actually comes over
and briefs to me their readiness to start the basic phase: This
is what the basic phase looks likes; here is my manpower
concerns, I am missing these people.
And I have all my N-codes around, and I can look right at
my N1, my personnel captain, and say: Go fix that right now for
that CO.
Then we do that when they go into the SWATT [Surface
Warfare Advanced Tactical Training] training and then when they
go into COMPTUEX [Composite Training Unit Exercise], and then
there is an actual formal brief that goes up to Admiral
Aquilino or Admiral Grady from 2nd or 3rd Fleet on the
readiness for the entire strike group to transition to the next
phase. That is how we have gotten after it, sir.
Mr. Garamendi. General Rudder.
General Rudder. We have been watching F-18 and TACAIR and
all the readiness through all the airframes since 2017. So, you
know, prior to this, this wasn't the first time that TACAIR and
especially the F-18 community, the commanders, you know, raised
their hands: I need, you know, X, Y, and Z.
And as an example, for the overseas elements and for the
maintenance side of things was the manpower piece. We knew
early on, back in 2016 and 2017, from some of the other events
that occurred, that we needed to change the manpower policy or
ask for an exception to manpower policy. That policy is such
that, when you send an unaccompanied Marine to Okinawa or
Iwakuni to work on airplanes, he is a 2-year Marine. That means
he is only going to be in that organization for 2 years, and
then he comes back. We asked for an exception to policy to make
that a 3-year. At the end of 2 years, they get their
designations, and when you have 30 lance corporals go in, to
get their designations 2 years later, and they leave, and 30
new lance corporals come into that same organization. Even for
our married Marines, accompanied Marines, if you will, it is a
3-year tour. So, you have this constant flux of manpower. So,
we have been trying to get--you know, we changed the policy to
3 years, so now at least you get a year out of that Marine
after he gets his designations in the maintenance department.
We have also--if you want to reenlist and you want to
reenlist under the--what we call the readiness kicker for
reenlistment, we will give you $20,000 to stay in that
organization for another 2 years. We have had some success in
overseas billets on people extending on that. I can't speak to
the exact risk management situations that all the commanders
talked about, leading up to this event because that is what the
CDA is looking at, but I can tell you that all the things, the
policies and procedures, were in place to assess that risk
before they did this mission.
Mr. Garamendi. I yield back.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Garamendi.
Mr. Lamborn.
Mr. Lamborn. Okay. Let's see what hasn't been already
covered here.
General Rudder, on the day of the December 2018 mishap, the
pilot had flown 13.1 hours in the previous 90 days, which is 47
short of the 60 required to be current. And in your written
testimony, you said that there has been some increase, some 2
percent for F-18--F/A-18 pilots and 6 percent for F-35 pilot
training flight hours. So that is good to have an improvement,
but it seems like there is still room for a lot more
improvement. Is the Marine Corps currently able to generate
enough sorties to meet the flight hour currency requirement for
pilots?
General Rudder. Yeah. We were, you know, in 2016, you know,
we were down around 9 hours per pilot, and then 2017, we were
13. Then we went up to 15.9, almost 16 in 2018. In 2019, we
just kind of held state sitting around the 16, 17 mark. So,
broadly speaking, our hours have come a long way. For this
particular event, those 90 days preceding when you see that 90
days, that is where, I guess, the data suggests, data shows,
that the readiness was not where it should have been when that
squadron, and the hours were not where they should have been.
Mr. Lamborn. Is that where Australia was involved?
General Rudder. That is where the Australia event and
trying to get back and typhoon season. Just a litany of things
that happened in there.
Mr. Lamborn. But, going forward, do we have the hours--the
sorties to provide the requisite number of hours?
General Rudder. Yeah. So in--I will speak broadly for the
F-18, then I will kind of come back to what we are trying to do
there--is for, in the F-18 community, a lot because of the MC80
effort, a lot because of what the naval enterprise has done for
Super Hornets and Legacy Hornets and F-35, we were able to get
to 80 percent seven different times in 2018, and we were able
to fly those sorties and increase our mission-essential task
completion rates out in the fleet and continue in a stride of
combat operations and carrier operations and continued
deployments.
So, the answer is we are not there yet. We are not
satisfied by any means. For 242 proper--they are still in the
crawl phase. I will tell you today they were 10 out of 12
airplanes, and they have been kind of looking pretty good
lately. So, we are rebuilding that squadron if you will. And
our endeavor is, at the end of this year, we are going to
transition that squadron to an F-35 squadron. So we will--we
will--we are currently flowing and at the end of this year, our
goal is to have two F-35 squadrons in Iwakuni with the brand-
new high-lot airplanes with a whole new refreshed crew, U.S.-
trained, sent forward, and what III MEF is doing in the
meantime is for their readiness or for their readiness
contract, if you will, is their training exercises are going to
be based upon readiness. And that will be the focal point,
institutionalizing that, much like the carrier air wing does
before they go on, and the Air Force does in some cases, for
Red Flag and Northern Edge [exercises]. We got a lot of
initiatives that are in the works.
Mr. Lamborn. Okay. Thank you for explaining that.
And, Admiral, I have a question for you. And I know this is
an older study. The DOD [Department of Defense] Inspector
General [IG] released an assessment that focused on the records
for a dozen destroyers from 2013 to 2018. But I guess the
report just recently came out. And for the Optimized Fleet
Response Plan, OFRP, they found that, quote, for 9 of the 12
destroyers, commanding officers reported training deficiencies
such as the inability to be certified or maintain proficiency
in mission areas such as electronic warfare or undersea
warfare. So, do you--and I know we have touched on training
already, but to just go even further into this, do you agree
with that assessment, and what changes will you be making in
response to that?
Admiral Brown. So, I do agree with that assessment because
the DOD IG report looked at the same readiness metrics that the
SECNAV [Secretary of the Navy] Readiness Review and the
Comprehensive Review looked at, August of 2012, I think it was,
until April of 2018. So, we had already started moving out with
urgency. It was in January of 2018 that we stood up the RROC,
the Readiness and Review Oversight Council. That is where we
took the 117 recommendations. We pared it down to 111. There
were a number that were duplicative. And then we moved out on
those things.
So those training deficiencies that were identified in the
DOD IG report were the same training deficiencies and problems
identified, and we have already moved out to correct that. So,
2 years later now, I am not calling mission complete, but if
you look at our enhancements and the initial results, it is
very promising, and I believe we are continuing on the right
path.
Mr. Lamborn. Now, going forward, how confident are you that
those changes that have been instituted will endure?
Admiral Brown. Sir, we do not deploy ships that are not
fully certified anymore. And if we chose to do that, that
would--the four-star fleet commander would be the decider. I
will give you an example of, there was a ship--and I won't go
into great operational details--but a ship did not complete one
portion of a certification, and it was a very--it was--they did
all the training, but weather prevented the actual shooting of
the gun, and we went to the four-star fleet commander and said:
It is unlikely that that ship is going to have to do that
mission set, and we recommend that the ship go on the patrol on
time. Admiral Aquilino approved that. It had to go through him.
We have institutionalized that, where before that decision was
made at a much lower level, back in 2016 and 2017. That--and
then we--and here is the plan of how we are going to get that
final small certification done. That is a sea change in the way
that we were doing business.
Mr. Lamborn. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you, Admiral. That is the
desired effect I think everyone was working towards. So, I
appreciate that.
Mr. Langevin.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank
our witnesses for your testimony today. Both Mr. Garamendi and
Mr. Lamborn touched on a lot of what I was going to bring up,
but I want to be clear--and first of all, my thoughts and
prayers are with the service members whose lives were lost and
with their families. We owe it to them to make sure that we
prevent these things from ever happening in the future.
I just want to be clear in that when there were
deficiencies reported on the Defense Readiness Reporting
System, it appears that the commanding officer of the Hornet
squadron consistently messaged deficiencies in training,
manning, and maintenance. Yet they were still tasked to conduct
missions that exceeded their capacity. How is it that that
happened, and are you confident that we are going to be able to
fix this?
General Rudder. Yes, Congressman. I think that is the--if I
were to kind of capture the three lines of effort [LOEs] to be
able to address that is for the tasking. One is now that the
operational commanders all the way up look at the operational
tasking and make sure that readiness is built into that. So, we
don't have back-to-back exercises.
In some cases, because of what countries, everybody wants
to work with--as the Admiral said, everyone wants to welcome
the Marines and sailors out there, but we have to manage that
and be selfish, if you will, to make sure that we are building
in readiness, so that our crews can train for the high-end
fight. That is LOE number one for III MEF right now.
LOE number two is the maintenance focus. One, get the right
manpower out there. Make sure they have the right training. And
then we have this new program that we put into place out there
called a maintenance capacity model that gives--you put in the
type of maintenance Marines that you have in a particular
squadron, and out the other end it spits out what you can fly
with that squadron within the realm of the amount of
maintenance and qualifications and numbers of maintenance
personnel you have on the flight line.
And then, finally, they put in kind of a standardization
and--standardization and compliance model. What that really
does is go back to the drawing board, do spot checks, and they
have done it with every squadron in the Pacific right now on
maintenance, safety, and operations to make sure that within
naval aviation, the policies, the procedures, and all the
things we hold dear to our heart, that typically are the ones
that we skimp on in some cases to make the mission happy--are
complied to in all cases. Those are the three LOEs that I am
confident that the III MEF commanders put into place that is in
effect today.
Mr. Langevin. Well, we are going to be following this
closely. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Langevin.
Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And Admiral Brown and General Rudder, thank you so much for
your dedicated service to our country. We note your dedication
and how much it means to all of us, your service.
With the tragic events of 2017 and 2018, which has spurred,
of course, these hearings, gives us an opportunity to improve
readiness for our world-class military. I sadly visited the USS
Fitzgerald in Japan and saw where the sailors were tragically
killed, and I appreciate your efforts to make sure that such a
gruesome event never happens again.
And in line with that, General Rudder, in last year's
committee report accompanying the NDAA, I included language on
mitigating risks related to mid-air collisions and terrain
crashes. The committee encouraged the Navy and Marine Corps to
consider a collision awareness system that can leverage
existing infrastructure and air combat maneuvering
instrumentation systems that would allow range training
officers and pilots to receive notification if an imminent mid-
air or terrain crash is assessed.
We also directed the Navy to analyze the cost and
feasibility of building out such a collision awareness system
on air combat maneuvering instrumentation, ACMI, equipment on
combat aircraft. What are your thoughts on improved
capabilities to avoid such aircraft mishaps and on leveraging
ACMI equipment toward that end? General Rudder.
General Rudder. Yeah, if I am thinking about the air-ground
collision avoidance system that I think we were referencing in
that report, for the F-35, we are writing it in. And for the F-
18, we are writing it in. We did get some marks last year in
those particular funding we put in for that, but we are
reattacking it this year. But that is--and that is if you
depart controlled flight with an airplane, the logic of that
airplane will right you--will right that airplane to give you
time to recover. Or if you are in a G-LOC [G-force induced loss
of consciousness], if you are pulling Gs and you black out, it
gives it logic to be able to do that.
On the other piece of that, for our V-22s, for CC-RAM
[Common Configuration-Readiness and Modernization], much like
we have a collision avoidance system in a KC-130, we are
putting that in our V-22s as well as we run them through the
retrofit line up in Boeing in Philadelphia.
Mr. Wilson. Well, I am glad to hear the effort is being
made.
And, Admiral Brown, the National Defense Strategy relies on
forward-deployed fleets. With regard to problems plaguing the
navigational and radar systems aboard the USS Fitzgerald and
McCain, I was deeply concerned about the vulnerabilities of
these systems to jamming and interference from China. As we
pivot toward a focus on great power competition, we know that
China is investing in technologies that attack our cyber,
navigational, and GPS [Global Position System] systems. How is
the Navy protecting these systems from attack?
Admiral Brown. Yes, sir. We have a very robust and
sophisticated methodology to prevent the ships from being
susceptible to cyberattacks. And primarily it is to ensure that
the programs that you are operating have the correct security
patches installed as designated by NAVWAR [Naval Information
Warfare Systems Command], and they understand what the
vulnerabilities are, they build those security patches, and as
long as the ships do their job--and I track this at my level--
we are then protected from cyberattacks from outside.
Mr. Wilson. And that is encouraging because the
capabilities, as we see, of near-peer competitors around the
world, we have got to be prepared. And, also, Admiral, inherent
to fleet readiness is the friction between force generation and
operations. In your testimony, you mentioned the Forward
Deployed Naval Forces Japan units following a tiered Optimized
Fleet Response Plan while implementing Strategic Readiness
Review [SRR] and Comprehensive Review [CR] maintenance and
training improvements. What is the greatest risk associated
with these maintenance and training schedules, and what is the
command doing to mitigate the risk?
Admiral Brown. So, one of the results of the SRR and the CR
is, we actually developed an OFRP Japan schedule that lays in
two--out of the 3-year period, lays in two significant
maintenance periods. One of them is called a SIA, which is a
ship incremental availability. It is kind of like a super CMAV,
which is our continuous maintenance availabilities, and then
there is a selective restricted availability that would last 3
to 6 months.
Based on--and those are now written into the ship schedule,
where before operations would often trump the maintenance
requirement, and that maintenance would keep getting deferred.
So then, if you have a ship that has been over in the FDNF
force for 10 or 12 years, and it is not getting the maintenance
that it is required to do, it is really not a capable platform
anymore. So, we have inculcated that into the schedules now.
Mr. Wilson. As a grateful military dad, I appreciate what
you are doing for readiness and safety. Thank you very much.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Golden.
Mr. Golden. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
General Rudder, I was going to--there has been a lot of
questions asked of both of you already, and I appreciate it
very much. I think it has been an important conversation. I did
have a secondary question I was going to ask you about in light
of the Commandant's Planning Guidance [CPG] and looking forward
to hearing from you about how you think the Marine Corps
Aviation is going to need to adapt to meet that guidance, but I
think obviously out of respect for the importance of this
subject, we could put that off until another day. But maybe we
could schedule a date, just hear your thoughts on that. Maybe
something the committee might be interested in as well.
But I thought, in light of the lessons learned that you
have already shared, some of the steps that you shared with us,
that have been taken to try and implement some of the fixes,
just a straightforward question: How might you rate the current
readiness of Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 242
today?
General Rudder. They are still not up to where they should
be. And we have been taking this year to rebuild them, to work
on the manpower, to work on the jets. I think when I was
looking at them in the past few weeks and today, they were up
around 80 percent, which is really good. So, it is good to see
that. We are taking a lot of different steps to try to put
material in the hands of the Marines. We have got another--we
had a lot of visits out there. The maintenance capacity model
that I talked about is in play, and we are trying to get them
some more Marines out there to kind of get them to where they
should be, so they can, you know, get back up on step. But we
have still got a lot of work to do.
And back to your question, just a general comment on the
Commandant CPG, on this subject in the Pacific is, he has put
out a lot of direction and guidance in forms of written
documentation out to the fleet, and he is trying to change the
mind-set of the United States Marine Corps that III MEF is
where--III MEF, the Pacific is where we need to send our best
and brightest, and III MEF is his focus. When he gets up in the
morning, he thinks about that theater and how we can get the
right capabilities out there with the right readiness.
Mr. Golden. Thank you very much for your efforts and the
frank response and, again, look forward to finding time to talk
more about that. I had no doubt that you would find a way to
work that into your response a little bit. So thank you, sir.
Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you, Mr. Golden.
Mr. Conaway.
Mr. Conaway. [Off mic] The NDAA 2019, 2019 NDAA required
specialists, ships, [off mic] and can you tell me how many of
those have been planned and executed? [Off mic]
Admiral Brown. Sir, I don't know the exact number. I know
that since that NDAA came out, all the INSURVs [Board of
Inspection and Survey inspections] that we have done have been
short notice or minimal notice INSURVs. I will have to take
that for the record and get you the exact number. But since
that--or since that law came out, all our INSURVs are short
notice or minimal notice.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 71.]
Mr. Conaway. [Off mic] General Rudder, I understand
refueling to be a rather complicated issue, and it seems odd to
me--I know you can't talk about specifics on the accident--that
a forward-deployed ``fight tonight'' unit that you have a pilot
who only had one daytime refueling trying to do it at night
when the requirement is six daytime. So, the evaluation, where
should that training be done, refueling? Should it be done
forward deployed, or should it be done as part of normal
aviation training? Again, I am a novice at this when it comes
to understanding why we have a pilot that inexperienced doing
something like that at night.
General Rudder. Yeah. So, as we look at, you know, the
aerial refueling history of that particular pilot, as the
command investigation brings out, is that, you know, the first
time he tanked at night was over the 365-day mark, and then the
first time he did the day was in that same area.
But throughout the year of that year leading up to
December, he had tanked day 11 times, and inside those 11 times
I don't have the numbers of plugs he did on and off the plug,
but he was certainly day qualified, per all the indications
that he had done. And then his last tanking was just a few
weeks before he did the night tanking.
So, if you look--and then he flew night, he flew a night
mission. He was not very--right, again, proficiency. I am not
going to try to dance around this proficiency thing.
Qualification, yes. Proficient, not where we would like a
Marine aviator to be. But in that environment, with the lead as
a tanker instructor, he was qualified to go up there and tank.
And during this, he actually successfully tanked and would
have, you know--and got off there. It is the post tanking is
where we saw the issue.
Mr. Conaway. Well, I might have misunderstood the briefing
document. It read as if that was his very first refueling ever,
and that was not the case. He had done that earlier. Okay, that
makes sense.
You had mentioned changing from a 2-year to 3-year
unaccompanied tour, but you also talked about married
maintenance guys. Would you have the stress on the families
that moving from a 2 to 3? They would have an accompanied tour
in Japan with the maintenance guys versus a 2-year
unaccompanied? Was the unaccompanied/accompanied simply the
fact that the unaccompanied doesn't have a spouse that would
move?
General Rudder. That is correct. I mean, by the joint
travel regulations, you kind of fit into those policy bins. But
now with unaccompanied, without spouse, first-termers, where we
used to do 2 years, we are now doing 3 years with those
particular ones.
Mr. Conaway. This would be a young maintenance operator who
has a spouse and they wouldn't go? I mean, there is stress on
the families that we are concerned about, obviously. Three
years away from home versus 2 years away from home is a
different deal. Is that given a consideration, the stress on
marriages that would occur?
General Rudder. Yeah. Well, if you are accompanied with
spouse, with dog, with kids, you are going for 3 years, yeah.
That has been the standard. That hasn't changed. But, you know,
back to your point, I think it is stressful. You know, to
forward deploy Navy, Marine, Army, and Air Force, and, you
know, with my counterparts, with the manpower models that we
do, we do our moving, our summer move period and off-cycle move
period, you are picking up the dog, the cat, the kids, the
family, and you are being sent to Japan to buy cars, to get the
license, and go into this environment for 3 years.
Now, I will tell you that some people go kicking and
screaming, and when they get there, they don't want to leave.
But there is stress on the families. There is stress on the
force when you put a family forward on a regular basis. And
this churns. I mean, as we speak today, there is somebody
picking up and going to Japan or going to Korea or going to
other places around the world.
So, I would say that, for the families, God bless them all,
because our families do a very good job and our spouses and the
kids and the dog. They are troopers.
Mr. Conaway. I appreciate that.
And, Admiral, if you would get us the information on the
specifics of those no-notice inspections.
Admiral Brown. Yes.
Mr. Conaway. Thank you, Chairman.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Conaway.
Mrs. Luria.
Mrs. Luria. Thank you.
And, Admiral Brown, I wanted to start out by following up
with a similar question that I asked Admiral Aquilino last year
when we were talking about a similar topic. And since you gave
Mr. Wittman a grade earlier on the manning, fit, and fill, I
was wondering if you could give us a letter grade on where you
think we are with the combat effectiveness of the surface Navy.
Admiral Brown. I will give us an A right now in the combat
effectiveness. You know, we not only went after the
recommendations that were in the SRR and the CR, but we really
went after making sure we were providing the right training at
the right time and building that combat effectiveness.
Mrs. Luria. So, I will just quote. In 2018, a comprehensive
test of seamanship skills of 164 junior surface warfare
officers was conducted, and you said the results were sobering.
Of the 164 officers assessed, only 27 completed with no
concerns, 108 with some, 29 had significant concerns, and that
was 18 months ago.
In February 2019, in the 1-year report from the Readiness
Council, the concluding paragraph said: ``One year in, it would
be naive to believe we are close to completing work. However,
due to the efforts of many professionals around the fleet, we
are currently safe to operate and a more effective Navy than we
were a year ago.''
Does that assessment in February of 2019 of safe to operate
align with the description that you just gave of an A?
Admiral Brown. Yes, ma'am, I believe it does. And one of
the things that we did right off the bat is we did ready-for-
sea assessments primarily in the FDNF Japan forces. That
program was so good, we took it to the entire fleet. And then
the ready-for-sea assessment was so good we actually wrote it
into the Surface Force Training and Readiness Manual.
So, the ships, the maritime warfare training that we are
giving, the navigation seamanship training changes that we have
made have had significantly positive impacts, I believe, into
the fleet.
Mrs. Luria. So, seamanship and navigation is one area. I
read recently that at the SNA [Surface Navy Association]
Symposium in another article here from U.S. Naval Institute
News says that you are doing a review to look closely at that
skills training provided to officers for combat effectiveness
and warfighting.
Admiral Brown. That is correct.
Mrs. Luria. Can you comment on that?
Admiral Brown. So the rigor that we put behind navigation,
seamanship, and ship handling was so good, in my opinion, that
we needed to bring it to the maritime warfare training to
ensure that we were preparing our officers, whether they were
ensigns or department heads all the way up to our warfare
commanders, that we actually had the maritime warfare training
correct for the future fight.
Rear Admiral Scott Robinson, who is the commander of the
Surface and Mine Warfare Development Center, is leading that
study for me. So, we are putting the same rigor behind that
training that we put behind the navigation and seamanship
training.
Mrs. Luria. So, you have talked a lot about the renewed
focus on specialty officer training, and I think I read that
there are 361 additional hours of training that will eventually
be available for these officers. How much of that training is
being conducted at sea?
Admiral Brown. So, the majority of that training is being
conducted in our state-of-the-art navigation and seamanship
training facilities.
Mrs. Luria. And in Norfolk, Virginia, that facility will
come online in fiscal year----
Admiral Brown. So, I have a navigation and seamanship
trainer that is already there. We have updated that to provide
bridge and CIC [combat information center] integration
training.
Mrs. Luria. And does that apply to all baselines and
classes of ships?
Admiral Brown. Yes, it does. So, you can load in whatever
ship that you are serving on into that trainer. So, if you are
serving on an LPD [amphibious transport dock], you have an LPD
that is loaded into the trainer.
Mrs. Luria. So that would assume that every LPD or every
DDG [guided-missile destroyer] or every cruiser had the same
configuration on their bridge.
Admiral Brown. Well, but see, for the officer training, as
you remember, the officers give orders. And so, what we are
really training the officers in how to stand the junior officer
of the deck or the officer of the deck watch. We do----
Mrs. Luria. That includes using a radar scope.
Admiral Brown. Absolutely. So, the radar emulators, if you
look at that, it is an ARPA [Automatic Radar Plotting Aid] and
it is representative of the ARPA that are on our surface ships.
The SPS-73 [type of ARPA], for example, is a----
Mrs. Luria. That same baseline exists across all ships that
people are being trained on, because if I recall, going back to
the recommendations from these reports, is that one of the
things that has been problematic is there is not consistency
across----
Admiral Brown. Right.
Mrs. Luria [continuing]. Single classes of ships for that
type of equipment. You get an operator who comes in who may
have been familiar with a similar but not the same, and you get
this inconsistency in training. So how are we addressing that?
Admiral Brown. We are actually addressing that. For
example, by the end of this year, every ship will be operating
on VMS [Voyage Management System] 9.3 or 9.4. That is a
significant change. The variances between 9.3 and 9.4 is really
just now the operating system. One is operating on Windows 10.
The other one is operating on Windows 7 or XP. So that is a
significant change, where throughout the entire fleet, we had
9.0, 9.1, 9.1.2.
The other thing is we put on a tertiary radar, a commercial
off-the-shelf radar. So, every single ship has the exact same
commercial off-the-shelf radar in their pilot house, where
before ship A might have a Furuno, ship B might have a
Raytheon.
So, although, you know, a pilot house on a DDG would look
different than a pilot house on a cruiser, what you really want
to have is the same similar systems so that you are not
relearning the navigation system.
Mrs. Luria. I know that we are out of time here and,
hopefully, we will have a second round. Does that apply to
steering systems as well?
Admiral Brown. Well, within the class of ship, it does. So,
we are upgrading all the DDGs, and all those DDGs will have the
same integrated bridge navigation system as they get through
their midlife upgrade.
Mr. Courtney. Great. Thank you. We will, hopefully, get
another round.
Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General, I think it was Congressman Golden that asked you
about what the current status was of VMFA-242, and I couldn't
hear the answer on the percentage. What percent did you assess
them at?
General Rudder. For the readiness today, there were 10 out
of 12 up jets, which is pretty good. Their manpower, they are
still a few short of some qualifications that we are working on
right now. But if I look at the manpower, they are getting back
to where they should be as a normal squadron.
Where we still need some work to do is make sure that we
can get to where they can train to their mission-essential task
list for an F-18 squadron, which includes, you know, eight of
the missions, certainly at least 70 percent of those missions
to get them into what we would call a T2 [readiness rating]
environment.
Mr. Scott. Okay. But you gave him a specific number of 70
percent or 80 percent. I just couldn't hear exactly what
number.
General Rudder. Yeah. They were at an 80 percent.
Mr. Scott. Eighty percent, okay. Thank you.
I want to read something to you. I had this marked as well.
But in our notes, it says that the pilot did not have the
requisite six daytime contacts with the fuel drogue before
performing night refueling. He had only performed one daytime
contact. And you said that is not accurate, he had actually 11
contacts.
General Rudder. So, what the investigation focused on is
his initial nighttime X. His initial nighttime X was 517 days
before this mission.
Mr. Scott. Okay.
General Rudder. And on that, it was said in his
qualification that he only had one plug, where the F-18 T&R
[training and readiness] says you are supposed to have six.
Now, depending upon where you go, sometimes your instructor
goes: Hey, that is the best plug I have ever seen; you are
qualified.
In this case, that is what he did, you know, over 500 days
ago before that.
So, if you take that, because that plug was out of the 365-
day window--you have to be inside a year window--it really is
interesting, but, again, if we look at the qualification
required for him to go up and do this plug a year later, he had
the requisite day plugs--like I say, 11 times on tankers--
before he went back into the night environment, so with an
instructor lead. So, technically, he was qualified to go ahead
and plug on that airplane at night.
Mr. Scott. So, the 13.1 hours that he had in the last 90
days, is that consistent with that unit? Did all of the pilots
have around the same flight time?
Admiral Brown. Yeah. I think he was probably at the low end
of that, but they were all around that same area. I think
because of the Australian piece, those 90 days in there, that
unit was really--but there are a couple, a couple other ones
that were lower and a couple that were higher.
Mr. Scott. Okay. So, the commanding officer would have been
a lieutenant colonel?
General Rudder. Yes.
Mr. Scott. Okay. And just reading through the notes here,
it says that inoperative locator beacons in the ejection seat.
And so, as I read through this, it looks like he had requested
them from the supply chain, had not been able to get the
locator beacons, and so he bought a commercial version of it
and then was ordered not to use those. Is that accurate?
General Rudder. There are two things there. One is the
locator beacon and the CSEL [Combat Survivor/Evader Locator]
radio that are in the normal kit for TACAIR and really the
CSELs for all aviation, but for the locator beacon that is
referenced as not being operable, it was operable, but there is
a longstanding complaint when you eject and you get in a chute,
you release your seat pan. In the seat pan is where your URT-
140 [type of CSEL] is. That begins emitting at that particular
time. The problem with that is, when you hit the water, the
procedure is--and it was executed by the backseater in this
case--is to get in your raft--I will get to the CSEL radio in a
minute--and then pull your URT-140 out of the water. It does
not emit when it is underwater, and that has been the complaint
that people have given.
Mr. Scott. If I may, it says: An inoperative location
beacon inside the ejection seat, this had previously been
identified. The commanding officer had purchased civilian
beacons for the air crew, but was ordered to stop using them
during the inspection just weeks ago.
Did the Marine Corps supply them with non-civilian beacons
to replace the ones that were inoperative?
General Rudder. The one that is in the seat, the URT-140,
that beacon itself is T-6, T-45, all of the F-18s, Harrier;
that is a standard NAVAIR [Naval Air Systems Command]-approved
beacon. So that is in the ejection seat itself.
So now the beacon you are talking about, there was a
purchase of kind of a fisherman's or a camper beacon off the
shelf, a COTS [commercial off-the-shelf] solution, if you will,
off-the-shelf system that was in that particular organization.
And that still had to be turned on. But those were, in fact,
taken away during an inspection, during one of their
maintenance inspections, as unauthorized gear.
Mr. Scott. My time has expired. My question is, if I may,
Mr. Chairman, it seems that the commanding officer was
expressing concerns about the readiness, and if the Marine
Corps is not getting the commanding officer the parts that he
needs to bring his readiness up, I am not sure that taking it
out on the commanding officer is necessarily where the blame
needs to be laid.
But I certainly respect both of you, and thank you for your
time.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Scott. And I think, again,
that is one of those questions that the command investigation,
we are going to be looking at when the time comes.
Mr. Kim.
Mr. Kim. Hi. Thank you so much for coming. This question is
for Admiral Brown. So, as I was going through some of the
details about the incidents, you know, it became clear that,
you know, not just the concerns about the personnel on board,
but just about mission-critical equipment that was on board.
For instance, I was learning about the SPY-1 radar array,
that there was some damage done to that. Something like that
could potentially render these types of vessels, you know,
mission kill. The concern that was kind of raised was it looked
like we didn't necessarily have spares on hand, and that some
of these had to be recommissioned from sort of new vessels and
others to be able to backfill that.
So, I guess I am a little concerned about the shortage that
I was learning about and wanted to kind of hear your thoughts
on what the Navy's plans are with regards to these shortages
like with SPY-1 radars.
Admiral Brown. Yes, sir. You bring up a really valid point.
A very expensive piece of equipment, a SPY-1 radar array,
complicated to make and very expensive. So, we don't
necessarily have a large, you know, off-the-shelf spare program
for something like that.
So, what we did in the Fitzgerald case, because her array
was damaged, is we took it from a new construction ship. And
then the organization is able to supply that radar to the new
construction ship at the right time when that ship needs that
array. And that is how we handled that particular repair.
Mr. Kim. Now, my understanding is, though, that, you know,
if you don't have these spares and if we are moving forward,
and there are additional problems going forward, whether--
hopefully, not these types of incidents but other types of
damage that can be done, is that something that could render a
ship decommissioned or mission kill if there is not a spare
available?
Admiral Brown. For that particular array, it could, but
there are four arrays on a ship, and there are things that you
can do. I mean, sometimes there are casualties that occur in
the natural operation of the ship that could potentially bring
a portion of the array down, and we have tactics, techniques,
and procedures to combat that.
Mr. Kim. Okay.
Admiral Brown. And where we are still able to fight the
ship.
Mr. Kim. Sure. So, from what I gather from what you have
said so far, is there sort of a plan in place to have sort of
battle spares for something like a SPY-1, or is that now in the
works right now?
Admiral Brown. I would have to--I am going to have to take
that for the record, because I am going to have to go back to
the program office and actually get the data on what their plan
is. I don't have that information off the top of my head.
[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix
on page 71.]
Mr. Kim. We will work with you to get that. I appreciate
your thoughts today. Thank you so much.
I yield back.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Kim.
Mr. Bergman.
Mr. Bergman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks to both of you for being here.
And, Admiral Brown, it was noted in a 2017 GAO report that
crew size reductions were contributing to readiness and safety
issues. In your testimony on page 5, you note that there are
now significantly more sailors on ships than during that time.
You know, it seems like--wearing an old hat here, it seems like
for decades we have been trying to reduce the crew complement
on ships to make it more warfighting and not have as many
sailors aboard, you know, if we had overkill.
How has this increase now in the manning level affected the
operations from the logistics support standpoint, and how does
that impact our growth in seabasing?
Admiral Brown. Well, as you can imagine, if there are more
people on board the ship to do more work, that means there is
less stress on the individual sailor to do that type of work.
For example, on a DDG, there are 25 more sailors on board a DDG
today than there were in 2012. And by 2023, there will be a
total increase of 45 sailors.
So, we have a command called NAVMAC [Navy Manpower Analysis
Center] that does the studies on, hey, what is the right
manning that is required on the ship. One of the things that we
did differently this time when we looked at DDG manning is we
actually looked at the in-port workload and how did that drive
the manning. Actually, the in-port workload is what drove the
increase from 8 sailors, an additional 8 sailors that we put on
in 2019 that is going to now bring us up to an additional 45
sailors by 2023.
The other thing that we did when they did the work study
is, out of a standard workweek, we reduced the available hours
for work from 70 to 67. So that then in itself feeds into the
equation that determines the required number of sailors on a
ship.
Mr. Bergman. Are we doing anything with simulation, you
know, crew coordination and all that, to see how the crew
functioning is, you know, using simulation as opposed to, you
know, actual ship time?
Admiral Brown. Well, we actually did--no, we didn't do--we
are not doing simulation for crew work. What we did do, though,
there was a study that was run out of Naval Postgraduate School
where we took one DDG and we used that as the control ship, and
then we took another DDG, and during the basic phase of
training, we manned them up to a much higher level. And what we
wanted to see, was there a difference in performance between
the two ships.
There really wasn't a marked difference in the performance
of the two ships, but, as you can expect, if one ship has more
sailors, those sailors said: Well, we were less tired than the
other sailors.
It was really kind of a subjective thing.
I am going to go--I am going to redo that study. There were
some control issues, and I wasn't really happy with the way
that we did certain things. And a schedule got delayed, and we
didn't adjust for that schedule delay. So, I think that there
might be something there.
Mr. Bergman. Okay, thank you.
General Rudder, you know, as we bring new aircraft
platforms into the fleet, are the maintenance challenges--you
know, we always talk about going from legacy systems to the
next-gen systems and that how do we ensure that our maintainers
are ready to go, know what they are doing.
You talked before about the first-termers, getting them up
to speed with their certifications, et cetera, et cetera. And
as an example, you know, for the CH-53K we have got coming
online here in a couple years, can you describe how that kind
of a platform was designed with readiness and safety in mind?
Are there features in making it easier to maintain, more
survivable, overall more efficient, maybe overall--again, going
back to the simulation piece and training, how we are doing
bringing new platforms online, using the K as an example?
General Rudder. The K is a very interesting example because
it was designed from the ground up with the maintainer in mind
so that, in the field or on a ship, they can replace and work
on components, and they were in the area. So, you know, one of
the things we did to make sure that that continues to be
furthered is what we would call the log [logistics] demo.
So, as they are testing the developmental test work at Pax
[Patuxent] River and the Marines are kind of assessing and
watching what is going on there, we have a 53-K sitting in a
hangar down in New River. And that log demo, all those Marines
are doing is taking it apart and putting it back together and
modifying the manuals as they go along to make sure that, if
there are little things that need to happen, a latch or an
access panel or something of that nature, it gets put in. So,
in that regard to the maintenance side, it is being designed to
be maintainer-friendly, Marine-friendly, to be worked in the
field.
For survivability, we have probably shot more ordnance at
this airplane and the components than probably any other
airplane from NAVAIR. And right now, at the highest
survivability rates, as far as being able to take a caliber
round of various different types of ordnance, this aircraft has
fared very well. And if you look at it, you know, the size of
it, it can take quite an extensive amount of damage before it
has to land or it sustains damage that makes it unflyable. So,
we are pretty happy with the way that aspect of it is going.
Mr. Bergman. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Bergman.
Mr. Vela.
Mr. Vela. Yes. Admiral Brown, the Fitzgerald incident hit
home for the people that I represent because back in the summer
of 2017, I attended Gunner Mate 1st Class Noe Hernandez's
funeral, and shortly thereafter visited Yokosuka, where both
the Fitzgerald and McCain were, and visited with the rescue
crew that was there during the Fitzgerald incident. Shortly
after his death, his wife said this: When the hero dies, nobody
ever remembers him. The families remember. They pay the price.
So let me start by asking, now that you have been at the
helm of Surface Forces for nearly 2 years, what can we tell
Mrs. Hernandez today that what has been done in 2019 to ensure
that ships can effectively balance their risks between
readiness and operating safely at sea?
Admiral Brown. Sir, that is a great question. And the
answer to that is we put risk management at the right level
now. We had junior officers assuming risk that really wasn't
their risk to assume. It is really the fleet commander's risk.
And so we have inculcated the processes.
We have memorialized the processes through instructions and
directives, and we have created the firebreaks between force
generation and force employment. But if there is any risk that
must be taken, that risk now resides at the right place. And
that is how I believe, going forward, is our best effort to
prevent a John S. McCain or a USS Fitzgerald event happening in
the future.
Mr. Vela. In 2019, how many ships went to sea with
certification waivers?
Admiral Brown. None.
Mr. Vela. And how many ships did not go to sea on time
because they were not ready?
Admiral Brown. There were a handful that we delayed,
whether it was because of a maintenance issue where they didn't
have the proper maintenance equipment redundancy or because
they were going to get shorted in training.
So, for example, I will use the DDG that was in the yards
in Hawaii. We are challenged with the workforce in Hawaii, and
we had three major CNO [Chief of Naval Operations]
Availabilities happening at the same time. Perhaps, you know, 5
or 6 years ago, we would have pushed that ship out and
shortened that ship's basic phase of training cycle and kind of
put that on the backs of the crew. We did not do that this
time. We shifted that ship to a different strike group.
That is an example of how we are not doing business the old
ways and that we are actually delaying ships from performing
missions if they are not ready to perform those missions.
Mr. Vela. So, what has been done to mitigate the
administrative burden placed on ships at sea so that they can
focus on operating at sea safely?
Admiral Brown. So, as part of the SRR, I was tasked or the
Navy was tasked to look at the various inspection
certifications and assist visits that we do on ships. I not
only took part in that, I led that for the surface force from
my headquarters.
We had an overall reduction of 30 percent of intrusive
inspection, certification, and assist visits, for the most part
that were duplicative in nature. In other words, the ship went
through that same inspection 3 months earlier under somebody
else's command authority and then was having the same stuff
looked at. That produced a lot of time savings that we were
then able to give back to the CO of the ship to focus on other
things.
So there has been an across the board, from a DDG or CG
[guided-missile cruiser], LSD [landing ship, dock], LPD, a 30
percent reduction. We inculcated that in the rewrite of the
Surface Force Readiness Manual to the Surface Force Training
and Readiness Manual. So now that is memorialized, and we don't
allow that mission growth. Although I led that, that was
approved by the two fleet commanders at their fleet review
board.
Mr. Vela. So, in your view, what value has the Naval
Surface Group Western Pacific provided, and how have you
attempted to minimize the burdensome reporting requirements?
Admiral Brown. So, a huge impact on the readiness of our
forward-deployed forces. Naval Surface Group Western Pacific is
my executive agent in Japan, and I have empowered that
commanding officer, who is a sequential major commander, so he
is a post major command captain, I have empowered him to make
decisions. And because of the tyranny of the international
dateline and time zones, he does not have to call home to me.
He knows what my priorities are, he knows what my standards
are, and he is able to make decisions. He is in an ADCON role,
administrative control role. He is not in the operational chain
of command, but his voice is very loud as he is working with
DESRON 15 [Destroyer Squadron 15] and CTF 70 [Commander, Task
Force 70] in the work-up of their ships. His voice is very
loud, because it has got my voice behind it.
Mr. Vela. Thank you, Admiral.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Vela.
Mr. Gallagher.
Mr. Gallagher. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here.
Lieutenant General Rudder, just to follow up on some
questions from my colleagues, so I thought the issue with the
night refueling qualification was not that the captain in this
case hadn't performed--well, that he had not performed night
refueling qualifications, but there was a glitch in the system
that showed that he had, correct?
General Rudder. That is correct.
Mr. Gallagher. And has that glitch been fixed? And I
apologize if I missed this earlier.
General Rudder. No, you didn't, and thank you for the
question. The glitch was as a result of discovering the system
was what we call chaining events. That means it was saying, by
doing these particular numbers in a T&R syllabus, it was saying
that you are qualified to do a higher level number further down
the syllabus, if that makes any sense.
We took that out in 2016 after kind of a like mishap with
tanking, and they fixed it, but because of a technical issue
with that, the icon that represents chaining was not put into
the right area. So, if you were to have that on the schedule,
it was still chaining daytime events saying you are qualified
for nighttime events.
Mr. Gallagher. Which is a bad thing. So, can we say now
that we no longer have that problem with chaining and icon?
General Rudder. We did. We went back to our training
command, and they reviewed all the icons within all the T&Rs
for all the airplanes to do that.
Mr. Gallagher. So, you feel like we fixed that basic
glitch?
General Rudder. We have fixed that basic----
Mr. Gallagher. And on the location beacon, so you are
saying that the problem isn't that the beacons don't work. It
is that they don't work underwater. So, in Captain Smith's
case, he was able to take his radio, get it onto the raft and
transmit, but in Captain Resilard's case, he could not, being
physically impaired, and, therefore, his location beacon was
insufficient to help him get rescued, correct?
General Rudder. His location beacon, the URT-140, was
underwater and that is the known deficiency. It does not
transmit through the water to provide that.
Mr. Gallagher. Well, in light of that deficiency, why not
support a COTS alternative for a location beacon, even though
it is not SOP [standard operating procedure] right now?
General Rudder. Yeah. In preparing for this, we went
through all the different COTS solutions that are out there and
what the program office, what they have authorized and not
authorized. And I can't give you a great answer on that.
I know that we just approved, NAVAIR has just approved the
use of a beacon, a physical strobe beacon that is saltwater-
activated, and they are being fielded out there right now. So
whether you are incapacitated or you can't do the functions it
requires--because you have the beacon that is underneath your
seat, but you also have your CSEL radio, which allows you to
broadcast emergency messages as well. But on top of that now,
when you go in the water you have a salt-activated beacon,
which at least gives you a strobe, and I think that would have
helped.
Mr. Gallagher. So, would it be fair to say we are still in
the process of making a change that would correct the beacon
problem?
General Rudder. We are. They are still looking at different
antennas. And I will offer, one of the things you will hear is
that there are some airframes that have a beacon that works
when it goes in the water. The F-35, actually, when we designed
that seat, when that beacon goes in the water actually floats
for a number of minutes to transmit. It is a very tighter
ability to transmit a grid or location of the downed survivor
to the joint recovery centers.
Mr. Gallagher. Okay. So, the initial probe that I believe
was led by Colonel Schoolfield, if I am saying that name
correctly, put heavy blame on the command climate in the
squadron. I think the term ``gross unprofessionalism'' was
used. But it also drew what I think subsequently we have come
to believe is a spurious correlation between that and Ambien
use. In one case, there was a reference to a case of adultery
that had actually nothing to do with the crash. But the report
remains the only thing out there publicly.
Are we going to correct the record if, indeed, there were
inaccuracies or spurious correlations in that report?
General Rudder. I think that is what the Consolidated
Disposition Authority is. So, when we look at all the facts
surrounding this particular event, much like they did with the
McCain event, then, you know, Admiral Richardson and Admiral
Moran, they pulled that up. So, when you say ``correct,'' I
can't say for sure what is going to be the final disposition,
but to your point, all that is being pulled up. And, again, as
we speak, in a locked room at a destination not to be named,
they are looking at all those facts that you are bringing up.
Mr. Gallagher. And I am running out of time. I will get to
it in the second round, hopefully. I think we have to weigh
this. I know there are reasons for why we keep the safety
review or the consolidated review confidential to encourage
candor, but I wonder if we shouldn't consider publishing a lot
of it and weighing the needs of candor versus the needs or the
duty we have to the families to really get this out in the
open, as painful as that may be. So, I just throw that out
there.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Gallagher. I mean, I can say
that I am sure I speak for Mr. Garamendi, that these joint
hearings are going to continue when that additional report is
released, and we are going to look exactly at the questions
that you identified.
So, I think we have done the first round. We still have
some members that are here. I am going to ask one question, and
then I yield in the same order that we went through earlier.
Admiral Brown, when we, you know, did the 2018 National
Defense Authorization Act codification of the collision repair,
you know, language recommendations, one of the things that I
know Admiral Richardson himself sort of wrestled with was
whether maybe it was time to just sort of get rid of the Inouye
Amendment once and for all and just eliminate that carveout for
the Pacific in terms of, you know, who decides to task a ship
versus who decides in terms of whether a ship is ready.
Last year I asked Admirals Aquilino and Grady to explain
how readiness for deployment would be judged uniformly across
the Pacific and Atlantic Fleet. They described how, under the
new policies and procedures, there would be more of a joint
effort to determine the readiness of ships to deploy and a
willingness to halt the processes if there were shortfalls.
So, from your perspective, has that continued to occur in
the years since, and are you confident that there is both a
unified standard across the fleet and a willingness to raise
the flag if manning, training, and equipment readiness is not
where it should be? Because, again, the committee sort of ended
up in sort of a neutral position. It didn't sort of, you know,
codify the Inouye Amendment, but it didn't repeal it either,
and it sort of left it sort of in the hands of the Navy for
now. And, again, I think for a lot of us, it was kind of a
short leash, you know, that we were sort of kind of settled on
when we did the final disposition of the legislation.
Admiral Brown. So, I am very confident that the policies
and the procedures are in place, that we are operating both
fleets to one standard. There is only one standard. But we
allow the two commanders to enforce that standard and ensure
those standards are met for their fleets.
The example that I like to use is, even if we go back to
World War II, you know Admiral Nimitz spent the majority of his
time on readiness. He allowed a number of fleet commanders,
Spruance and Halsey, to actually fight the war and do the
tactics, but he spent most of his energy on building readiness.
I think that is important for a fleet commander to have
that capability to do. We have one Navy and we have one fight,
and the standards are the same whether you are deploying from
the east coast in a strike group or deploying from the west
coast in a strike group. You are going to deploy at 92/95 fit/
fill. You are going to deploy fully certified. And me and my
counterpart are driving material readiness. The goal is to
deploy CASREP [casualty report]-free, but really what we are
getting after is we don't leave any redundancy on the pier.
The Strike Group 4 and Strike Group 15, who are the
training strike groups that work up the carrier strike groups,
they operate under the same procedures. They are always trading
best practices, lessons learned. These are the things that we
are seeing on the east coast. These are the things that we are
seeing on the west coast.
More importantly, we are bringing that training regimen to
FDNF. We have now done one advanced phase of training, SWAT,
for FDNF ships. I am getting ready to do the next advanced
phase of training. We had not done that before in the FDNF
world. So, I am very confident that we know what the standard
is. It is the same standard between the two coasts. We are
training and meeting that standard.
Mr. Courtney. Mr. Garamendi. I am sorry, I guess we go to
Mr. Gallagher since no other Republican is here, and then we
will come back to you. That is our committee rules.
Mr. Gallagher. Are you going to hold that against me? It is
rare that I get an opportunity like this.
So just to follow up, Lieutenant General Rudder----
Mr. Courtney. You get bonus points for staying.
Mr. Gallagher. I have a punch card. I get a free coffee
after 10.
So, another one of the issues was that the pilots spent so
much time in the water without rescue happening because we have
an agreement with Japanese forces, but they are only available
to help when they are actively training. And in this case, they
weren't actively training, and so it took a while before we
could get our allies to help us out and find the two downed
pilots.
Has that glitch, for lack of a better term, been fixed?
Have we had any discussions with our Japanese partners to have
a better SOP for how do we get our guys in the event of a
terrible accident like this?
General Rudder. Yeah. They have had, you know, several
tabletop exercises. They have got now the procedures set up to
be able to interact with the Japanese counterparts. The
Japanese, quite honestly, are very good at doing this, but the
coordination that we had with them was not as effective as it
should have been. The ability to pick up the phone and call and
coordinate with the right person to do that.
The two different examples of that--and you are right, we
had a pilot that was in the water way too long for various
reasons. The pilot that was picked up, you are right, they were
scheduled--they were on standby to launch in 2 hours, and they
did that. And they sortied a bunch of aircraft and ships to do
that, and 4 hours later, they picked up the survivor, the
backseater. He was able to get in his raft and get his radio on
and do all the things that we teach in water survival.
On the second note, I think the ability with that sea state
and being where it is was just challenging for them. So, I
think the coordination we have with the Japanese right now--and
they are very proud of their sea--stellar efforts. I will offer
that. I can't pass up an opportunity to thank our Japanese
counterparts for what they do and how many people they put out
to sea to try to find our pilots and survivor, but we have
managed that coordination, and we have got that much more. So,
now, on a regular basis, the First Marine Air Wing is doing
coordination exercises with their Japanese counterparts.
Mr. Gallagher. Again, no one is blaming the Japanese. I
think, if anything, over the last 3 years in particular, we
have had a deepening partnership with them. I just think if,
indeed, the status quo is still that they are only available to
help if their forces are actively training, we need contingency
plans for should something like this happen when they are not
actively training.
Will the Consolidated Board ask the question why there was
a week of around-the-clock flights ordered so soon after the
President quite publicly decided to cancel training exercises
in light of his attempted rapprochement with the North Korean
regime?
General Rudder. Yes, Congressman, they will explore that.
Mr. Gallagher. Okay. I guess the question to both of you as
we kind of zoom out from the details of these incidents, I
mean, in your opinion, based on everything the Navy has tried
to do in the last few years, everything the Marine Corps is
trying to do, do you think we are--and specifically our Marines
and our sailors in INDOPACOM [United States Indo-Pacific
Command], are we ready to fight tonight?
Admiral Brown. Yes, sir.
General Rudder. We are. I mean, fighting that particular
fight, depending upon who you are talking about, has different
personalities involved as far as the personality of that
particular fight, but the training that we are conducting, the
things that we are procuring, the readiness for our surface
fleet and, quite honestly, looking at, you know, where the Army
and Air Force and Marines and Navy and the coordination that is
going on in PACOM right now and how we do that as an integrated
fight is the best I have ever seen.
Mr. Gallagher. Well, thank you, gentlemen, for your candor,
and I yield my extra minute to Mr. Garamendi, if he would like
it.
Mr. Garamendi. I yield my time to Mrs. Luria.
Mrs. Luria. Thank you, Mr. Garamendi.
So, Admiral Brown, as the commander of Naval Surface
Forces, would you say that you are responsible for surface
force training and readiness?
Admiral Brown. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Luria. Okay. So just a few yes/no questions. Does
Surface Warfare Officer School Command work for you?
Admiral Brown. No, they do not.
Mrs. Luria. Does the Navy's N1 that controls manning work
for you?
Admiral Brown. No, he does not.
Mrs. Luria. Do you write the personnel qualification
standards [PQS] for watchstanders?
Admiral Brown. Yes, I do, through SWOS [Surface Warfare
Officers School].
Mrs. Luria. Okay. And do you select surface commanding
officers or screen them personally?
Admiral Brown. If I am serving on that particular board--I
can only serve 1 year and I have to take a year off, but I do
personally slate all our commanding officers.
Mrs. Luria. Okay. So, with a couple exceptions of the
pieces that go into the training, so the PQS standards, you
personally review them?
Admiral Brown. Well, my N7 does, and is involved in their
development or modification.
Mrs. Luria. And so, you are responsible for the unit level
training once all members of the ship are assigned and come
together on a ship?
Admiral Brown. I own the basic and the advanced phase of
training. The integrated phase of training is owned by the
numbered fleet commander.
Mrs. Luria. Okay. So, you own the basic phase, the advanced
phase, and then the integrated phase, it transfers over to the
fleet commander?
Admiral Brown. The numbered fleet commander, yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Luria. So, the reason I was asking, because there are
a lot of different pieces here that come together. And at an
event with you in 2018, Vice Admiral Balisle said, when he was
speaking of what he referred to as the seven spokes of
readiness, most of them are under the control of a unique and
different person and none of these people ever come together
under a centralized command group who has real cognizance and
knowledge of what is going on of all of those spokes.
And, you know, I recently read a testimony that Admiral
Rickover gave to Congress in 1979, and, you know, as a nuke, I
like to quote Admiral Rickover and refer back to, you know, his
tenets of how he put together the nuclear power training
program. He states that, unless you can point your finger at
the one person who is responsible when something goes wrong,
then you never really have anyone responsible. And we had an
opportunity to kind of discuss this morning all these different
pieces that come together.
So, my understanding is that you have the Readiness Reform
and Oversight Council now, where you have a lot of different
groups coming together to coordinate these efforts. Are you in
charge of that council?
Admiral Brown. No, that council is run by the Vice Chief of
Naval Operations and the Under Secretary of the Navy, but I am
a member of the board.
Mrs. Luria. Okay. So, I go back to the first question,
because you said you were responsible for the training and the
readiness of surface forces, but you are not responsible for
the coordinating council that brings all of these groups
together.
Admiral Brown. No, but I think that that is held at the
appropriate level. It is held at the ECH [Echelon] I level, and
that is who I and the two ECH II commanders, the fleet
commanders, Admiral Grady and Aquilino, they also serve on the
board. So, the voice from the ECH III all the way up to the ECH
I is heard.
Mrs. Luria. Okay. So the reason I brought this up in this
context is, going back to the reports that we had from the
Comprehensive Review, one of the recommendations was that the
Navy should establish a single echelon to higher headquarters
responsible for the readiness generation of all forces.
But the Strategic Readiness Review did not agree with that
recommendation, and it was not done, and, instead, they
recommended placing the three senior platform type commanders
in Norfolk, co-located with Fleet Forces Command, which, since
you are in San Diego, to my knowledge, has not also been done.
Admiral Brown. Correct.
Mrs. Luria. Can you speak to why the Navy has not carried
out what their own recommendation to----
Admiral Brown. So, the two reports were competing against
each other. They both had different recommendations. So, the
working group that was in charge of that, which was the Command
and Control Working Group, studied it. And the decision was
made at the ECH I level and actually was brought to CNO
Richardson at the time that we were not going to do that. It
was not going to provide any improvements in command and
control that were necessary to prevent these incidents from
happening in the future.
Mrs. Luria. Thank you.
I yield back the remainder of my time.
Mr. Courtney. Great. I think we have exhausted every member
who is here, in terms of questions. I know Mr. Wittman wanted
to join us, but I think, you know, time is up.
Mr. Garamendi. Have we exhausted the witnesses?
Mr. Courtney. I think they are doing great. Anyway, I want
to thank both the witnesses for being here. As I said, this has
been sort of a multiyear project for both subcommittees. And,
again, obviously with the report that is going to be issued
sometime in the next 2 or 3 months, I know Mr. Garamendi and I
and the staff will, you know, obviously be in close contact and
we will probably do this again.
And, again, I want to thank Admiral Brown for joining us
here today. You know, the spacing of these hearings on the
collisions are starting to get a little bit longer, but the
interest level is still sky high. So, you know, we will stay in
touch and, again, on a needs basis, I guess, hopefully, we will
call you back or some of your colleagues. So, thank you all for
being here.
And, with that, I will adjourn the hearing.
[Whereupon, at 4:21 p.m., the subcommittees were
adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
February 5, 2020
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
February 5, 2020
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[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING
THE HEARING
February 5, 2020
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RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. CONAWAY
Admiral Brown. Minimum Notice MIs since Oct 1, 2019 76 planned in
FY20 (53 surface, 21 submarine, 2 CVN) 23 executed thus far (7
cancelled due to operational commitments) 18 surface ship (12 CNSP, 6
CNSL) MIs executed 5 submarine (4 CSP, 1 CSL) MIs executed [See page
20.]
______
RESPONSE TO QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MR. KIM
Admiral Brown. Only three SPY-1 Arrays (USS COLE, USS FITZGERALD,
USS OSCAR AUSTIN), one Signal Processor Group (USS CHANCELLORSVILLE),
and one Transmitter Group (USS SAMPSON) required major-damage repairs
since 2000. Previous SPY-1 major-damage repairs utilized assets from
the production line vice a pool of ready battle spares. Navy conducted
a deep dive into options for SPY-1 Radar system battle sparing. In the
long-term, the FY20-FY25 Program of Record plans for Surface Ship
Modernization and Decommissioning will enable Navy to harvest
components for storage and employment as spares of critical equipment
for use in cases of battle damage. Many lower level components are
available for immediate harvest, but others are not available until
future years due to the specific upgrade/replacement schedules for each
Destroyer (DDG) or Cruiser (CG). If an immediate need for a critical
spare arises in the interim, Navy can obtain those components from the
various ashore engineering sites. Removal of that equipment for use in
cases not involving battle damage is not prudent given the operational
impact of respective shore sites. [See page 26.]
?
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
February 5, 2020
=======================================================================
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. WITTMAN
Mr. Wittman. Vice Admiral Brown, the Navy's November 2017
Comprehensive Review of Recent Surface Force Incidents cited several
operational, training, and readiness concerns regarding the fleet's
legacy surface ship radar systems. Specifically, examples of the
findings stated: ``. . . RADAR operators consistently failed to use the
correct range scale or tune the RADAR to the appropriate settings . .
.'' (Sect. 3.6.1--pg. 37), and that: ``. . . both SPS-73 and SPS-67
RADARs on forward deployed Cruisers and Destroyers are reported as
consistently below operational availability thresholds for the last two
years.'' Further noting that, ``Their replacement, Next Generation
Surface Search RADAR (NGSSR) has been delayed due to underfunding.''
(Sect. 7.2.2--pg. 84) The Review concluded with a recommended action
to: ``Accelerate plans to replace aging military surface search RADARs
and electronic navigation systems.'', and specifically, to: ``Fully
fund development and implementation of Next Generation Surface Search
RADAR.'' (Sect. 7.3 [NAVSEA, 31Mar2018]) As you know, the Next
Generation Surface Search Radar is being designed to improve the
detection, navigation and situational awareness capabilities of your
fleet, and importantly, to modernize decision support tools and watch
stander workload reduction features to improve readiness and prevent
future collisions.
Vice Admiral Brown, can you describe the importance of this radar
modernization program to your efforts to improve the readiness of your
fleet, and any steps you are taking in the interim to address the
operational and training challenges cited in Comprehensive Review?
Admiral Brown. Replacement parts for high-end electronics
inherently obsolesce over time as technology matures. This results in
decreased readiness as our systems age and components, that degrade or
fail, become in short supply. Radar modernization is critical to
combatting obsolescence. The Next Generation Surface Search Radar
(NGSSR) will field the latest surface radar technology that industry
can provide. NGSSR fielding keeps the Navy in line with industry
technology standards and increases readiness. Before the 2017 USS
FITZGERALD and USS JOHN S. McCAIN collisions, the Surface Force
recognized a decrease in surface search radar operational availability,
and took two steps to increase the readiness of these systems. The
first was to initialize Rotating Radar Maintenance Assistance Team
(MAT) visits to ships by the Navy's rotating radar experts. The goal of
the Rotating Radar MAT program is to optimize radar performance and
increase technical proficiency of the shipboard technicians. The second
action was to accelerate the fielding of technical refreshes on older
systems. These refreshes replaced some aging radar parts with newer,
more reliable, and more readily available parts. Following the USS
FITZGERALD and USS JOHN S. McCAIN incidents, the Surface Force
implemented two additional actions to increase radar readiness. The
first was to implement the Rotating Radar Improvement Program (RRIP).
The RRIP requires all ships to provide monthly reports on critical
radar system components and overall system performance. Navy radar
engineers evaluate this data, and in turn, identify readiness drivers
and conduct trend analysis. The second action was to require ships to
report all navigation system casualties at a minimum of Category 3--the
second highest casualty category. This ensures all operational
commanders have visibility on casualties to these critical systems, and
ensures energizing of the appropriate resources to repair system
casualties. All of these efforts resulted in increased readiness.
Driving operational availability higher is difficult as these systems
age. The Navy is committed to NGSSR as soon as possible. Pursuant to
Comprehensive Review (CR) findings, all of the following measures to
enhance the development, assessment, and sustainment of radar operator
proficiency are in place. A 2018 review of Personnel Qualification
Standards (PQS) for all Bridge and Combat information Center (CIC)
watchstanders, developed specific PQS requirements for radar operator,
where such formalized requirements did not previously exist. Additional
Automatic Radar Plotting Aid (ARPA) training was added to the Basic
Division Officer Course (BDOC) curriculum and included in the Junior
Officer of the Deck (JOOD) Course established in 2019. Navigation,
Seamanship and Shiphandling Trainers (NSSTs) in each Fleet
Concentration Area (FCA) now bear integrated radar capability between
the Bridge and CIC training suites. Holistic reviews of Bridge/CIC
effectiveness during Bridge Resource Management Workshops (BRMWs) and
Type Commander Navigation Assessment Team visits now include Radar
operator training and mentoring. Navigation Self-Assessment Groom Teams
(NAV SAGTs) include Radar tuning and equipment functionality
verifications as part tailored reviews for each respective ship class.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. KIM
Mr. Kim. Vice Admiral Brown, what are the Navy's plans to deal with
the SPY-1 radars battle spare shortages in current inventory?
What plans, if any, is the Navy considering in implementing a
possible SPY-1 array battle spare program? Logically, 100% of the DDG
and cruisers currently in the Navy's inventory have SPY-1 radars, it
would be a reasonable question to ask has the Navy considered plans to
implement a battle spare program, in light of the recent incidents.
Admiral Brown. Only three SPY-1 Arrays (USS COLE, USS FITZGERALD,
USS OSCAR AUSTIN), one Signal Processor Group (USS CHANCELLORSVILLE),
and one Transmitter Group (USS SAMPSON) required major-damage repairs
since 2000. Previous SPY-1 major-damage repairs utilized assets from
the production line vice a pool of ready battle spares. Navy conducted
a deep dive into options for SPY-1 Radar system battle sparing. In the
long-term, the FY20-FY25 Program of Record plans for Surface Ship
Modernization and Decommissioning will enable Navy to harvest
components for storage and employment as spares of critical equipment
for use in cases of battle damage. Many lower level components are
available for immediate harvest, but others are not available until
future years due to the specific upgrade/replacement schedules for each
Destroyer (DDG) or Cruiser (CG). If an immediate need for a critical
spare arises in the interim, Navy can obtain those components from the
various ashore engineering sites. Removal of that equipment for use in
cases not involving battle damage is not prudent given the operational
impact of respective shore sites.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. CISNEROS
Mr. Cisneros. Is there any sort of objective test, such as a
standardized written and/or practical examination SWOs take in order to
qualify/requalify as an Officer of the Deck or for obtaining their SWO
pin? To my knowledge, Merchant Marines take licensing exams. If there
are none, I'd be concerned about the subjectivity of assessments.
Admiral Brown. There are multiple standardized objective tests and
exams required for Officer of the Deck (OOD) and Surface Warfare
Officer (SWO) qualification. For example, a pre-requisite for OOD
qualification is successful completion of the 9-week Basic Division
Officer Course (BDOC), which includes several written exams on
Navigation Fundamentals, Rules of the Road, and ship-handling.
Additionally, to reduce variance and subjectivity during the
assessments, the Surface Warfare Officers School Command (SWOS)
developed check sheets, established grading criteria, and provided
assessor training. Collectively, these measures ensure consistency and
standardization in the assessment process employed at each milestone
level.
Mr. Cisneros. Since the Surface Navy has already adopted some
paradigms from their counterparts in Naval Aviation such as CO/XO
fleet-ups and dedicated training ships, is it worthwhile for the
Surface Warfare Community to look into a NATOPs-type (The Naval Air
Training and Operating Procedures Standardization) program that
Aviators use, which has shown to have dramatically reduced aviation
mishaps since its inception?
Admiral Brown. The Surface Warfare Community already employs
similar measures. For ship-handling, the Surface Navy utilizes the
United States Coast Guard (USCG) Navigation Rules as the source
document governing the operation of vessels upon the high seas and in
all waters connected therewith navigable by seagoing vessels. For
comprehensive governance of SWO requirements and milestones from
accession through major command, the Surface Warfare community utilizes
the Surface Warfare Officer Career Manual. This document spans all of
the following:
SWO Milestone Mariner Skills Assessments, Evaluations, and
Competency Checks
Surface Warfare Mariner Skills Logbook requirements
Surface Warfare watchstanders proficiency requirements
SWO Qualification requirements
Surface Force Command requirements
For professional competency requirements, the Surface Warfare
community utilizes Surface Warfare Officer Requirements Document
(SWORD) to define SWO competencies during career progression from
Division Officer through Major Command. The SWORD provides the Surface
Force a broad guide of the progression of knowledge and professional
skills expected at each career milestone. It establishes a commonly
understood baseline requirement upon which training and the associated
infrastructure can be developed, implemented, and validated to ensure
the delivery of required skills. The major competencies at which SWOs
develop, enhance, and sustain proficiency across multiple career
milestone assignments are: Fight the Ship, Drive the Ship, Manage the
Ship, and Command the Ship. The SWORD provides the specific knowledge,
skills, and abilities, (KSAs) associated with each four core
competencies (Drive the Ship, Fight the Ship, Manage the Ship, Command
the Ship), and outlines the key means of sustaining currency across the
SWO training continuum.
In defining Surface Warfare navigation, seamanship, ship-handling,
engineering, damage control, material management, program management,
and other requirements, Surface Warfare drew heavily upon USCG and
commercial maritime industry. In recent years, the Surface Force
progressively adopted elements of the merchant marine industry
Standards of Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW) and USCG 3rd Mate
(Unlimited) licensing requirements into SWO and enlisted training where
such requirements were aligned to Surface Warfare core competencies.
The breadth of SWO qualification requirements (some of which exceed
STCW/USCG standards--e.g. SWO Mariner Skill Logbook documentation
criteria) and the presence of specific STCW and USCG licensing
requirements (some of which have no bearing upon Surface Warfare
competencies--e.g. Cargo Handling), however, preclude wholesale
adoption of STCW and 3rd Mate (Unlimited) licensing requirements. The
Surface Warfare mariner skills assessment regime is comparable to the
Navigation Skills Assessment Program (NSAP). The Maritime Institute for
Technology and Graduate Studies (MiTAGS) employs NSAP, which is the
assessment gold standard for assessment for the commercial marine
industry.