{"id":39573,"date":"2018-01-04T14:57:17","date_gmt":"2018-01-04T14:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2018\/01\/04\/interview-us-navys-top-surface-warfare-officer-on-collisions-lcs-and-warfare\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T23:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T23:12:08","slug":"interview-us-navys-top-surface-warfare-officer-on-collisions-lcs-and-warfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/digital-show-dailies\/surface-navy-association\/2018\/01\/04\/interview-us-navys-top-surface-warfare-officer-on-collisions-lcs-and-warfare\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: US Navy\u2019s top surface warfare officer on collisions, LCS and warfare"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SAN DIEGO \u2014 The surface Navy has had, by any objective standard, a difficult year. The collisions of the destroyers John S. McCain and Fitzgerald claimed the lives of 17 sailors, and the accidents produced a pair of damning reviews that called into question many of the decisions made by Big Navy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while the surface force has seen its share of tragedy and heartbreak, it has also chipped away at long-standing issues. It has moved to reorganize and fix its beleaguered littoral combat ship program. It also revamped the training for LCS sailors and made headway on its goal of putting more lethal weapons on more ships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Defense News sat down with the Navy\u2019s top surface warfare officer, Vice Adm. Thomas Rowden, at his Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet headquarters in San Diego, California, to discuss the past year and look ahead to 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where is the balance between one of the core missions, defending the aircraft carrier, and distributed lethality \u2014 presenting that diverse array of threats?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the phases of the campaign, it\u2019s not a one-size-fits-all. The enemy gets a vote, the enemy reacts, we maneuver, position our forces, then assess the situation and act according to the missions we need to accomplish. Obviously defending the high-value assets, whether it\u2019s the logistics train, amphibious ready group or the aircraft carrier, doesn\u2019t mean that ships can\u2019t be used for other missions. And our ships, uniquely, are multimission assets. That means we can pull them in, defend the high-value assets, then put them in surface action groups and wreak havoc on the adversary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking for more on the U.S. Navy\u2019s surface fleet? Get the latest here.<\/a><\/b>
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You put the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System on the amphibious transport dock ship Anchorage. Can you discuss how that fits into your vision for moving the surface fleet forward?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think certainly by putting HIMARS on the back of Anchorage and hitting a target ashore, I think that gives our adversaries pause. A ship that normally does not perform the strike mission was able to perform it and perform it very effectively from Anchorage. That gives us yet another tool in the distributed lethality tool box to be able to expand the scope of the missions we can assign to our ships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s the status of maintenance in the shipyards? How are you doing in terms of creating realistic work packages and turning ships over in the yards?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly there continue to be challenges in terms of capacity. We\u2019ve got a lot of ships, they need a lot of maintenance and we\u2019re dependent on the contractors to provide that maintenance. I would submit that the resource I\u2019m most challenged by when it comes to maintenance is time. And we need to get the ships into the availabilities on time, out on time and do what they need to do. We\u2019re really pushing the private yards to the limits with respect to getting that work done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re working very closely with them, and while there certainly have been delays in the execution of maintenance, we\u2019ll continue to work with them, work through the issues that we have and try to deliver those ships as rapidly as we can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the manning front, I understand there is a bit of a distributable inventory issue in terms of personnel. It\u2019s been increasingly hard to fill billets getting into the optimized fleet response plan cycle.<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been some decisions made in the past that are giving us some manning challenges. What I can tell you is that the ships going out the door are manned with the right number of sailors to do the right things that they have to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are we getting them manned as early in the cycle as we would like to? No, but we are working our way through it. I think between the Bureau of Naval Personnel and the work the chief of naval personnel is doing to understand what needs to be done, I think the whole darn team is doing a pretty good job of getting the ships manned up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Perry-class frigates: Do you think they\u2019d add value to the fleet, or would it be more of a burden to maintain an old ship?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it comes down to return on investments. If the ships can be cost-effectively brought back into the fleet and contribute to the mission, then it may be a direction that we want to go. I know that we are studying right now to find out what it would take. It does have a gun, it does have a flight deck that carries two very capable helicopters. Once the studies are done, that will determine where we want to go with those ships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve got a few LCS coming out of overhauls. What\u2019s the outlook for next year and getting those ships into a regular operational tempo?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m really excited about \u201918 and for littoral combat ships. We are getting the training and deploying ships delivered in numbers. We\u2019re getting them through their post-shakedown availabilities. We\u2019re standing up the divisions, the two East and West Coast [anti-surface warfare] divisions, and starting to get the crews aligned and processes in place in order to be able to start putting those ships out on deployment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think \u201918 is going to be a great year for the surface force and a particularly good year for the littoral combat ships.<\/p>\n\n\n

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With a crew of merely 54 sailors, each sailor has to perform the job of five surface sailors in the regular fleet.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

What\u2019s going on with LCS right now?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re focused on understanding how to get crews trained on training ships, get them onto the ships, get the ships deployed and making sure we can materially support them. The best part is as we deploy these ships, getting them into the hands of the sailors in order to really wring out everything they are going to be able to deliver to the combatant commanders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve got Coronado coming back from deployment. How did that go, and from the perspective of being able to support that ship going forward, what are you looking to alter or improve in the future to make sure everything runs smoothly?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think that deployment was fantastic and I think the crews did fantastic. It was the first deployment of the trimaran \u2014 learned a lot about what it could do, learned a lot about what we needed to do to support its operations forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Would I have liked to see a higher operational availability? Yes, I suppose I would. But for the times the ship was operating, it really performed very, very well for the 7th Fleet commander. So as I look back on the Coronado\u2019s deployment and the performance of the crews and the performance of the ship, I think they did a superb job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the status of the mission packages? When do you see those filtering out into the divisions?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can tell you that the [surface warfare] package is performing as designed and I\u2019m very pleased with where we are with that. We\u2019re doing a bunch of testing with the anti-submarine warfare package, and that package is going to be a superb addition to the fleet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are all well-aware of the challenges on the mine-hunting\/mine countermeasures side of the house, and I think it\u2019s best to refer you back to the program on that one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving onto the accidents, what was your reaction when you heard about the McCain collision?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, it was a gut blow when we found out that Sunday when the John S. McCain had collided. The focus was initially taking care of the ship, taking care of the sailors, taking care of the families \u2014 making sure we understand exactly what the situation was and exactly how the ship got into that position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve obviously read the comprehensive review. What are your thoughts?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly tremendous value in the assignment [Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran] gave to [Fleet Forces Commander] Adm. Phil Davidson in the execution of the comprehensive review. Absolutely full support from the surface forces on the conclusions of the review, the 58 items that we are already attacking and will continue attacking.<\/p>\n\n\n\t