WASHINGTON \u2013 The U.S. Navy\u2019s top officer wants to expand the reach of each of his ships, and he\u2019s looking to networking to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said the current trajectory of his shipbuilding program gets the Navy to 355 ships sometime in the late 2030s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c[That] is way late to me,\u201d Richardson told an audience at the Office of Naval Research\u2019s Science and Technology Expo. \u201cWe need to get to get that equivalent naval power but we need to get there in the 2020s, that\u2019s the decade of competition. \u2026 As the person whose consumed with getting the Next Navy, I\u2019m saying \u2018let\u2019s get building.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Navy is going to look to increase its networking between platforms and systems as a way of gaining an advantage over the potential adversaries more quickly, given the long timeline associated with a massive naval buildup, Richardson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The industrial base could support an extra 30 ships over the next seven years to help get to the goal, he said, but even such an extravagant expenditure \u2013 which wouldn\u2019t be likely under Budget Control Act spending caps \u2013 would still leave the fleet about 40 ships short of its 355-ship goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Richardson argues that increased competition with China and Russia and the proliferation of surveillance technology means that the Navy was going to have to create new advantages by both growing the fleet and increasing both the capabilities the interoperability of each of its ships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow do all these platforms work together?\u201d Richardson asked. \u201cIn the extreme, I\u2019d want to network everything to everything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Richardson said increasing both the number of ships and the capabilities on them provided a linear path forward to grow U.S. naval might, but increasing the networking would bend the curve towards achieving the capabilities of a larger fleet faster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interoperability and networking were major considerations contained the request-for-information on the Navy\u2019s next-generation frigate, known as FFG(X).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The RFI called for a frigate able to establish a complicated picture of a tactical environment with its on-board sensors, unmanned systems and embarked aircraft and beam that information back to the fleet through secure communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To achieve that, the Navy is planning to use systems that already in wide use in the fleet and that integrate well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to make sure that these ships can fit into a future distributed maritime operations and be a contributor to that wider network of systems,\u201d said the Navy\u2019s surface warfare director Rear Adm. Ronald Boxall in a Defense News interview July 10. \u201cAnd to do that you need some commonalities. There is a big move afoot to get more common systems and to think about these things on the front end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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