| Editor in Chief James D. Hessman and Senior
Editor Gordon I. Peterson interviewed Vice Adm. George P. Nanos Jr. for this issue of Sea
Power.
SEA POWER: Your predecessor at
NAVSEA, Vice Adm. George R. Sterner, placed a sharp focus on the fleet customer--have you
sustained that emphasis?
NANOS: Absolutely. I think George did a
wonderful job of articulating what the core businesses are for NAVSEA and what our culture
should be. The strategic plan that he built during his time here provides a wonderful
framework and road map. It hits all the bases and really articulates extremely well what
it is we need to do. My focus is to get traction against that strategic plan and to take
it to the next step--to climb on his shoulders and try to reach the next rung of the
ladder in terms of its execution.
We must understand our organization and
how it applies to the strategic plan--and make sure our organization fully supports it.
NAVSEA is now in a period of great change if you look at the backdrop we face in industry.
In the shipbuilding world we are facing a great challenge in that we are trying to
recapitalize the Navy to buy the high quality ships we need for the first half of the next
century during a period of great technological change--particularly in our electronics,
radar systems, and weapon systems.
At the same time, we are facing a
situation of overcapacity in both the public and private shipyards. We need to help guide
both the public and the private sectors to accommodate this infrastructure to the Navy's
needs. It is a very, very challenging time for us.
You have stated that you are
redefining NAVSEA for the needs of the 21st century. How so--and why?
NANOS: It is difficult to talk
partnership with industry until you understand yourself thoroughly and what it is that you
need to do. So the first thing we have embarked on is to determine what we call our
"core equities"--what technical businesses we have to be in as a SYSCOM [systems
command]. I do not mean businesses in a commercial sense--I mean in the sense of unique
technical activities we have to perform as a SYSCOM in order to sustain the Navy for the
future. We are identifying the areas we have to work in, the required facilities, and the
number of people we have to have so that we can sustain that ability over the years ahead.
That is one piece.
The second piece involves taking a very
heavy reduction from more than 120,000 people in NAVSEA a decade ago to slightly under
50,000 today. We have come down about 60 percent at NAVSEA [during the past decade]
compared to roughly 40-odd percent in the Navy as a whole. With a reduction of this
magnitude, we must ask ourselves if our organization today is what it needs to be for the
future. When we determine what businesses we should be in, we must then make sure our
businesses are well aligned with the parent corporation to do what we need to do for the
future. We must lay out a rationally integrated organization with a single corporate span,
not layers of management--an end-to-end corporate plan with a single corporate focus, just
like the most successful companies in our nation have adopted.
The third piece in redefining ourselves
deals with customer service and customer focus. We must put together the systems and the
execution strategy within NAVSEA to be the best customer-service organization in the
country--bar none. If you look at our nation's most successful companies, almost without
exception they have a very powerful customer-service organization. I intend to put a lot
of energy into that.
Nothing that I have said really impacts
our strategic plan--it is all a backdrop. It is how we prepare and tune the organ-ization
to execute the strategic plan and do it well. If you read our strategic plan, it is
exactly what we need to do. We just need to get on with it. And to be successful, we must
train, we must be a team, and we must focus on execution. If I can get to the point where
we are beginning to smoothly execute the strategic plan, I'll have done well!
During 1998, NAVSEA--together with its
PEOs and private shipbuilders--launched 16 new ships and one submarine. On average, how
did you fare with their construction schedules and budget performance?
NANOS: In general, we have done pretty
well. The ships, with few exceptions, have come out on schedule. In general, the quality
of the ship construction has been high. On some of the ships there have been some budget
issues, but they generally have been overruns against contract price within the government
ceiling that we accept for those projects. The key here is that, in terms of execution, we
are holding our own in that the quality of the product is high, we also are meeting the
scheduled needs of the fleet, and we are pushing aggressively to lower cost.
The ships delivered in 1998 were designed
and the programs were set up before many of the acquisition-reform initiatives that we are
exercising now came into being. The fact that we are executing them as well as we are
indicates that our people in charge--our supervisors of shipbuilding, our program
managers--are professionals and working very hard and doing extremely well. I think you
will see, as our modern acquisition-reform techniques improve, that the [shipbuilding]
picture also will improve in subsequent years.
What are the additional steps you plan
to improve customer service?
NANOS: One thing we started as part of
our focus on interoperability was to work today's problem right now. We put
an officer with each [aircraft carrier] battle group to be the action officer to focus all
SYSCOM work associated with that battle group's interoperability.
Does that individual deploy with the
battle group?
NANOS: They take the battle group right
up to deployment, although in some cases they may make the transit [to a forward-deployed
area of operations]. The point is, they are the single points of contact that are going to
focus all our efforts on the battle group as it is getting ready to deploy. The idea is
the same as that for a "1-800 service number" basically--a single point of
contact, one-stop shopping. And I intend to explore expanding that concept so I have a
single point of contact for all my products.
If you think in terms of the best service
organizations, you have a single point of entry. The last cell phone I bought came with
one of the keys already preprogrammed for the customer service number. It is not that we
do not have good people who are working hard to answer fleet questions--it is a matter of
simplifying contact with the right person to solve the problem. That is not
technical magic--that is management and making sure you have the right systems to
facilitate that contact. We are going to work that issue.
Do you have any concrete examples of
where acquisition reform has cut costs?
NANOS: We cannot actually give you the
bottom-line savings in dollars because most of those reforms are in mid-program now, and
we have not completed those ships yet. But I can tell you what we are doing. The new
attack submarine has been designed using a computerized product model. In other words, it
is a design that has been done in an environment very similar to what Boeing did with the
777 [airliner]. We are working hard in our surface ship construction; with LPD-17 [San
Antonio-class amphibious transport dock] we took the program office and co-located it with
the contractor. They are working as a single team. In addition to the business
improvements and enhanced communications, they also are building a new electronic
environment to go with that ship--an integrated product development environment for design
and a second system for planning and management. I have very high hopes for that. It has
taken them a lot of work. As with any new approach, a culture change is necessary. They
have stood up to that challenge, and we see them turning the corner.
DD-21 [land-attack destroyer] is another
program that will go on to the next level, I believe. There are two contractor teams
working on concepts for the DD-21 program, and we hope to take DD-21 the next step beyond
LPD-17. Step by step, slowly but surely, we are bringing the innovations of commercial
business and systems into our ship-design and shipbuilding processes.
Part of NAVSEA's renaissance in
strategic planning, innovation, and performance entails the adoption of "best
business practices." How have they have benefited your fleet customer, the NAVSEA
work force, and the taxpayer?
NANOS: There are many benefits--greater
efficiency, higher customer satisfaction, lower operating costs, faster cycle times, and
world-class performance, to name a few. For example, we want to take commercial
availability [ship maintenance and modernization] planning information and move it into
our public shipyards to enable both public and private shipyards to work off the same
planning tools.
The issue of COTS [commercial
off-the-shelf] systems is going to drive tremendous change in how we do business. As you
know, a lot of the best electronics today are available commercially. The commercial
market has taken developments far beyond what military investment could do, and we are
having to use those products in our more advanced systems. That brings about a wholesale
change in how we design and do long-term support for these systems.
Secretary of the Navy [Richard] Danzig
has placed a top priority on improving the way Sailors and Marines live, work, and
fight--what role is NAVSEA playing?
NANOS: We have taken up the challenge to
ease the burden on Sailors. During the past year, for example, we have accelerated our
efforts to reduce the level of maintenance Sailors perform aboard ships--both surface
ships and submarines. On surface ships, for example, our goal for the SURFMER [Ship
Maintenance Effectiveness Review] program is to reduce onboard maintenance by 30
percent--and we are meeting that goal. We are looking at all shipboard maintenance
and, after making sure that it is work that actually has to be done, taking every effort
to reduce it to provide more time for Sailors to do other things.
This NAVSEA initiative looks at all
shipboard maintenance--aircraft carriers, surface combatants, and submarines.
We have another program that has grown
out of the secretary's initiative that is called the Capital Investment for Labor
Initiative. This program seeks to reduce a Sailor's hours spent on maintenance by looking
at what we can do to get systems that are easier to maintain and less manpower-intensive.
Looking back at my own career, my family
was less upset by the long deployments and family separations than by the fact that I was
so heavily engaged in my job when I was home. Navy families steel themselves for the long
deployments, but when their loved ones are home, they want to see them. Unfortunately,
some of the systems we have been using through the years have not allowed that. We are
fixing that.
You were material officer in Destroyer
Squadron Ten, is that correct?
NANOS: Yes, and I was a chief engineer
twice in my career, so I am sensitive to the concerns Sailors have in this regard. We are
also looking at the redesign of the watertight door to reduce maintenance, the use of new
paint to extend the preservation of tanks and voids on ships, and ways to improve
habitability--like the sit-up berth. We have a great deal of activity underway aimed at
improving the quality of life for Sailors at sea.
In May 1998, NAVSEA was given the lead
by CNO [chief of naval operations] to work with the other Navy systems commands and fleet
CINCs [commanders in chief] to fix deficiencies in battle-force interoperability revealed
during battle-group workups and fleet operations. How is that effort progressing?
NANOS: We are handling this on multiple
levels. First, as I mentioned, to do the best with what we have, we assigned personnel to
each of the battle groups--the point of contact to make sure we are doing everything
humanly possible to work interoperability issues.
We then put in place what we call our D
minus 30 process--D minus 30 months. We look at what is in the hopper for a battle group's
systems configuration 30 months ahead of their deployment to determine what the final
configuration will be. Then we plan how we are going to fully test and integrate that
suite of equipment. Everything has to function on the battle group level, not just on the
ship level. The D minus 30 process allows us to plan how we are going to test the systems
ashore and how we are going to bring them to the ships.
Once we figure out how that configuration
operates, we will be able to give all the ships capabilities and limitations documents
that will tell the battle group commander exactly how things are functioning and, if there
are any issues, then he will have enough time to train the crew to be able to deal with
them. We believe that, over time, configuration control is going to get continually
better, but the point is that we had to start today.
We also convened a working group last
year to look at realistic land-based testing at the battle group level. For the past 20
years we have had the capability to test an individual ship within its lifelines to make
sure its systems were operating properly. We have not been able to deal with the larger
battle group "system of systems" approach to bring things together and test all
ships' systems in their entirety. Interoperability problems were being revealed when the
battle group went to sea to work up for its next deployment--too late in the process.
We are now in the midst of testing our
first battle group ashore. It has been a tremendous success story in that our Naval
Surface Warfare Center, combined with NAVSEA 05 [deputy commander for warfare systems],
has put together an engineering team that defined, procured, and installed a Distributed
Engineering Plant [DEP] capability. We now have the JFK battle group [USS John F.
Kennedy] up and operating in the DEP--a set of facilities ashore that will allow us to
duplicate the deployed battle group for testing purposes. We can ensure software works
properly across the entire battle group before it is installed and taken to sea.
The reason this is important is because
our fleet is deployed so heavily. With about 324 ships now, we are maintaining a high
OPTEMPO [operations tempo] and meeting a full set of international commitments. That does
not leave much extra time for testing carrier battle group interoperability at sea.
We also can plan for the battle group's
training and the support they are going to need to get a leg up for deployment. This
allows the battle group commander to get more benefit from predeployment workups. We are
in the middle of our first one, and it is going very well. We also are using it for a Y2K
[year 2000] test.
The last piece of it is: "What are
we going to do about future systems?" Everything I have told you is aimed at
transitioning to get a battle group to sea and then to make sure we adequately test the
system. But we also have to worry about our future systems--how do we ensure that they
will be interoperable early in the design process? That is the systems engineering part of
it, and SEA 05, together with the other SYSCOMs, is working the interoperability of future
systems as well as generating fixes for current systems. We need to have this engineering
discipline up front in the design process.
So, you now are testing ashore the CEC
[Cooperative Engagement Capability] concept, correct?
NANOS: That is the point. We can
demonstrate that capability ashore, and we can demonstrate the interaction between the
Cooperative Engagement Capability and other communications. The Cooperative Engagement
Capability is a tremendous capability, and it is operating exactly the way it was designed
to operate. What we did not do as well as we needed to was to understand exactly the
impact that the introduction of that additional connectivity would have on existing
systems. There was nothing specifically that was flawed in CEC's development; its
interaction with the rest of our systems became a problem.
You are working Navy-wide in your
current interoperability efforts. Where do you go from here in the joint [multiservice]
and combined [multinational] arenas?
NANOS: Eventually, yes, we will be joint.
And the networks are there. For example, if you look at JTIDS [Joint Tactical Information
Distribution System] capability, it is a joint standard. And what we are learning about
that will eventually help us in cooperation with the other services and our joint
partners. It is a complex situation. CEC must be jointly interoperable--but we have to be
strong in our own knowledge of our systems and our capabilities before we can do that well
with the other services or our allies.
Much of the joint and coalition effort
rests with SPAWAR [Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command], correct?
NANOS: Yes. SPAWAR is responsible for C4I
[command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence] in the Navy, joint, and at
the OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] level. I am thoroughly committed to
supporting John Gauss [Rear Adm. John A. Gauss, SPAWAR commander] in his efforts.
With your emphasis on battle-systems,
have you enjoyed some success in cross-ventilating the traditional stovepipes that exist
in the Navy's systems commands?
NANOS: We are making great progress. In
NAVSEA 05 there are representatives from SPAWAR and NAVAIR [Naval Aviation Systems
Command]. John Gauss, [Vice Adm.] John Lockard, [NAVAIR commander], and I are committed to
working together and not letting the normal frictions between organizations submerge the
greater goal of making the Navy whole in this regard. We often check with each other on
issues and stay centered on goals. This is an area that is going extremely well.
NAVSEA is now leveling off at a work
force of 50,000 after the largest reduction in people and facilities in its history. Has
your drawdown ended?
NANOS: The pressure is still on to reduce
further. But are we going to operate with no people? The answer is no. NAVSEA requires a
lean, appropriate structure to work with our industry peers when they conduct business
with the Navy. Our effort to define our core equities will determine what NAVSEA
capabilities should be for the future. It is then incumbent upon us to go back to the
system [senior leadership in the Department of the Navy] and say, "Look, we have done
our homework; we have examined the command and the functions that need to be done. Here it
is--what we think the lean structure for the NAVSEA of the future needs to be." We
need to make the Navy hierarchy understand that thoroughly--and believe it.
We need to show the Navy the true value
of NAVSEA's activities. They are all working capital-funded activities [i.e., reimbursed
for their work by individual Navy programs]; they all have as much work as they can
handle, and they are doing extremely good work for their customers. We need to share what
their structure for the future is and bring that home to the Navy. At that point, I would
expect we would level off and maintain our core capability--our corporate capability for
the Navy.
Corporations have been doing the same
thing. The exceptional corporations have come to grips with the tension between
outsourcing and what they do in-house. Jack Welsh of General Electric [John P. Welsh,
president, General Electric Corp.] says that "you shouldn't have in your back office
what's in somebody else's front office." In our NAVSEA business there are things in
my front office that are back office for industry. We must preserve those equities for the
Navy. We are getting very close to completing our review of core equities. We will wrap it
up in the next few months and bring it forward to the Navy. We will be establishing what
we believe to be the core of NAVSEA for the future. We are not quite there, but we are
close.
NAVSEA experienced large reductions in
the first rounds of BRAC [Base Closure and Realignment], but my philosophy is not to wait
for BRAC. I think there is a lot we can do within our present organization to reduce
carrying costs by looking at our core businesses, by using public-private partnerships to
move away from those businesses that are not core, and by looking at leasing currently
underutilized facilities to private industry.
We are at the point in NAVSEA where we
ought not to look to BRAC to solve all our problems. We ought to get on with life and
reduce our carrying costs without waiting for BRAC to do that for us.
Do you see a role for greater reliance
on public-private partnerships?
NANOS: Absolutely. Again, it is the
"front office-back office" idea. We want to keep the infrastructure we need to
do our business and provide appropriate leverage, but we do not want to have too much.
There are some places where industry is not particularly helpful--for example, in areas
where there is not a lot of defense business. We have to maintain infrastructure there.
But where industry is strong, we will by all means partner. The other definition of core
relates to the requirement to be able to satisfy JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] wartime
requirements, so there are some things we simply cannot give up as a strategic resource.
The nice thing about leasing facilities to industry and about public-private partnerships
is that you don't lose the long-term leverage over those facilities.
How are the plans progressing for your
headquarters move to the Washington Navy Yard in 2000?
NANOS: They are going very well. But even
if you only move two or three miles, it is a major change in lifestyle for people. We are
bringing our work force along, trying to get them acclimated to the idea. The facility
where we are going will be wonderful. I have seen some of the work that NAVFAC [Naval
Facilities Engineering Command] has done for NAVAIR and for other buildings in the Navy
Yard, and they are doing a first-class job. Washington is in the process of going through
a renaissance. You can already see the strategic impact of our future move to the Navy
Yard. New housing is being constructed in that area, and buildings are being offered up
for commercial lease. Our industrial partners are going to move over there with us, and
there are plenty of facilities in that area that they can use. I think you will see a
resurgence of that part of town economically. Given that no move is absolutely painless,
this one has a very high probability of coming out very nicely.
Is there anything else you would like
to share with the readers of Sea Power?
NANOS: I think my message would be that I
am trying to prepare NAVSEA for the next millennium--to streamline the organization in
terms of being a unified corporation. Let me sum it up by saying that we must understand
what businesses we are in, have a streamlined corporate organization that focuses on those
services, and have customer service that is second to none. That is my vision and my hope
for the NAVSEA of the future. We are ships! |
