WASHINGTON \u2015 The U.S. Navy\u2019s top officer made clear from the time he came into office in late 2015 that his job is to prepare the service for an era of renewed great power competition with Russia and China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Key to that effort has been his belief that getting new technologies to the fleet can no longer take a decade to complete. In an age when advances in technology can happen overnight, the Navy has to be adaptable and agile to keep pace with the threat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defense News sat down with Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations, to discuss speeding up the acquisition process, some of his key projects and his vision for where competition is headed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019ve spoken about the Navy\u2019s unmanned aerial tanker, the MQ-25 Stingray, as being a test bed for where the Navy can find efficiencies in the acquisition system. What have you learned going through this process?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agile acquisition has been a big emphasis area during my time as CNO. We\u2019ve stood up this accelerated acquisition program, and there are really two elements to that: One, if there is a problem out there for which we don\u2019t have a solution, let\u2019s get rapid prototyping going and get to a solution fast. And then for those things where we have a solution, either through rapid prototyping or off the shelf, what can we do to get that in production and in the fleet as fast as we can?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With using those two elements, given that we are in this competition, a position strengthened by the National Defense Strategy, the need to go faster was never more important. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The MQ-25 was really a signature program to test the limits and plow new ground in that direction. And so we brought industry in way earlier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think that\u2019s key to getting the acquisition cycle faster, even in the refinement of the requirements phase. If I put people together in a room and they are not fully informed \u2015 if they come out and say, \u201cWe\u2019ve done the full analysis, and what we need is a time machine\u201d; OK, that\u2019s great, but that\u2019s going to be a lot of money. If you have industry in the room, they can say: \u201cWell, we don\u2019t have time travel just yet, but I can get you 80 percent of it with something I\u2019ve got that\u2019s mature.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so that\u2019s where we\u2019ve been with MQ-25, is to bring them in, see what they\u2019ve got and see how fast they can get a prototype together to fly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One thing we did do was we locked down on requirements. We could probably get agreement from everybody that we need something to tank. It liberates a lot of our strike fighters from doing that mission and it\u2019s something that we can get done \u2015 its relatively straightforward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What has made the difference in speeding up acquisition from where you sit?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part and parcel with the acquisition approach has been: Let\u2019s get empowerment as far down as we can. And you can see this manifesting down at Naval Air Systems Command where we\u2019ve allowed a lot of those decisions to be made, at least in the prototyping phase. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There have been some areas where you take a look at the traditional approach to doing things and you find out, well, wait a second, that\u2019s for a manned aircraft; this is an unmanned aircraft, so maybe we don\u2019t need to do that. The operational testing and those sorts of things, I think there are a lot of interesting opportunities there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The response from industry has been overall positive. I think they are enjoying being part of it. To date, it\u2019s been smooth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What are your thoughts on the reported initial operational capability date for MQ-25 of 2026?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019d like to see it as fast as possible. 2026 is out there, but there is a pretty keen sense that we can drive this left, maybe by a significant amount. So I\u2019ll just say as fast as possible. We\u2019re going to continue to accelerate. There are some in the Future Years Defense Program already. If we can move it left, that would be good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were questions earlier in the process about whether the requirements for MQ-25 were stable. Are you comfortable with the requirements and do you know precisely what you want?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, I think we\u2019re pretty set right now. It was such new ground for us in terms of opening this conversation up so early. So there was a bit of exploration that needed to be done. And that back and forth, that refinement phase, I think was new and important. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So maybe when [industry] said: \u201cAre you sure this is really what you want?\u201d Boy, I welcome that question because that\u2019s where you find all the knees and the curves, the cost-performance curves. And by asking us, \u201cIs this what you really meant?\u201d I think it sharpens us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moving on to Ohio-replacement: It\u2019s a very tight schedule, and the Navy is reportedly eating into the schedule. Where do you think you can buy back some time?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you ask anyone in that program, the thing that I\u2019ve been driving is that we have to get as much schedule margin into that program as possible. The technological risk is understood, the mission and the requirements are certainly understood, we have an experience industrial base in this regard. I feel confident we are going to be at about 83 percent design maturity before we start to build. So that helps a lot in terms of controlling costs. All of that is trending in the right direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having said that, it\u2019s complicated. And while it is on schedule, we need to get ahead of schedule. Because inevitably something will happen, we\u2019ll discover something in test. And it\u2019s such a critical mission that we need to retire risk and pull everything to the left as aggressively as we can. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is going to be a lot of strain on suppliers with two Virginia-class submarines in Columbia-class years, and perhaps even three Virginias in off years. And then the Columbia is equivalent to, what, a submarine and a half when compared to a Virginia?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
More like two. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Are you comfortable with where the supply chain is in building all these submarines? What can the Navy do to make sure those suppliers are staying around and keeping up with demand?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
You bring up this comfort level thing again. Nothing I do makes me comfortable. I\u2019m kind of a naturally uncomfortable person. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I suppose Adm. Rickover didn\u2019t train people to be comfortable with the way things are.<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
No, we don\u2019t go to copacetic very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But you\u2019re right, where we were with fiscal restraints have leaned out that industrial base a tremendous amount. It\u2019s the second- and third-tier suppliers \u2015 some of these are very small shops making valves or circuit boards or things like that. And because things are so leaned out, there is not a lot of room for any of those teams to fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so where we are working with the primes, folks like Newport News or Electric Boat shipbuilding. We\u2019re going to have great insight into those suppliers to make sure they are delivering quality on time, [the] first time because a delay in a shipment of valves can now delay the delivery of a major nuclear-powered warship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stable, predictable funding is the most important thing we can do to send a signal to the suppliers that their work is valued, we\u2019re making the investments, stick with us, there are business opportunities. When we don\u2019t have that, often times their margins are a lot smaller and they can\u2019t absorb this uncertainty or these delays. So it makes it all pretty fragile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your overall vision for where the surface fleet is going to go in this era of increased competition?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
You have to think about what do we define as a platform. What are those technologies that define what a platform is? Networking for sure because unmanned might be something we really want to lean into. What are the qualities and characteristics of an unmanned platform so that we can call it a platform instead of just a robot that floats? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It has to be networked so we can tie back in. It probably has to have some autonomy for when the networks degrade. Sensors for sure. Maybe weapons. Maybe it could go with a small crew; and as the risk goes up we could pull that crew off and take it from there in an unmanned way \u2015 looking at all those. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s getting harder and harder to completely disappear. So, there is a value to stealth \u2015 that\u2019s lowering your signal. But there is also a value to deception, decoys and those sorts of things where you are raising the noise. So you can see this new concept emerging where it\u2019s all about controlling the signal-to-noise ratio for the threat. What can you do to lower your signature as much as possible and create a lot of noise? So you\u2019re starting to see the role for electromagnetic maneuver warfare and those sorts of things rolling in. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, admits he’s a “naturally uncomfortable person” and how that affects his view of the supply chain and making sure war fighters are properly equipped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":82971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":16,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[160,13,16,36],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3361],"class_list":["post-44924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-interviews","category-naval","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"W55CSRNPNNFSBGDJAOOO2VBK4A","arc_canonical_url":"\/naval\/2018\/04\/18\/the-navys-top-officer-talks-acquisition-sub-building-and-the-future-of-naval-warfare\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n