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By
J.A. CARNEVALE JR.
Rear
Adm. J.A. Carnevale Jr., the Navy's program executive officer for DD-21
and associated systems, has participated in the acquisition and
construction of six classes of ships while serving in both field and
headquarters positions, including duty as supervisor of shipbuilding in
Pascagoula, Miss.
Historically,
combatant ships of the U.S. Navy have demonstrated their unique role in
shaping the international security environment through forward presence,
deterrence, and power projection. Recent events, such as the various
crises in the Balkans and the retaliatory bombings of terrorist camps in
Afghanistan, have validated the Navy's Forward ... From the Sea
strategy and justified the relevance of its next-generation warships
such as DD-21, the 21st-century Land-Attack Destroyer. In the decades
ahead, the fleet will continue to "be there" when needed. But
to become even more viable the Navy's surface combatants will need to
bring more offensive, responsive, and flexible capabilities to the
fight.
"We
need 21st-century platforms doing 21st-century things," Secretary
of the Navy Richard Danzig explained recently to Navy and industry
leaders attending an American Sea Power forum on Capitol Hill.
Specifically, he said that the Navy's focus should be on providing
"delivery capabilities" to influence events ashore. The Navy
plans--based on its Mission Needs Statement and Operational Requirements
Document (ORD)--to invest the DD-21 with substantial delivery
capabilities, primarily by making its surface warriors tactically
smarter than their adversaries, by employing smart weapons, and by being
a smart buyer.
To help
make tomorrow's surface warriors "tactically smarter" the Navy
plans to equip them with the tools, technologies, and knowledge they
will need to fight and win in the 21st century. DD-21 will provide
significant contributions to an expeditionary task force commander's
objectives by serving as a critical node in a larger network composed
primarily of intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance assets and
weapons-delivery platforms under a concept commonly referred to as
Network Centric Warfare (NCW) in the 21st century.
Collective
Capabilities
In general,
and in NCW in particular, naval warfare capabilities will likely be
measured in terms of the collective offensive firepower and knowledge
created by interoperable forces within a given battleforce network. As
the Navy's first surface combatant designed from the keel up to support
NCW, DD-21 not only will help bridge the capabilities gap in surface
naval fire support, but also will serve as a true joint-force
multiplier, promising an exponential increase in overall combat
effectiveness.
Operation
Allied Force, the NATO air war against Serbia, reinforced the need for a
responsive, knowledge-based data-sharing network, especially in regard
to time-critical targeting and battle-damage assessment. Media reports
have focused on NATO's frustration (caused by insufficient or late
targeting data--often complicated by Serb forces moving or hiding their
assets) in identifying and destroying assigned targets.
DD-21 and
other future delivery platforms will have the unique ability to provide
long-range, accurate, and lethal targeting/retargeting capabilities.
However, for DD-21 to carry out its missions in support of forces
ashore, it must have access to key data from either organic or off-board
sources via the robust connectivity systems that are key to
implementation of the NCW concept. DD-21 land-attack systems also must
be highly responsive, with rapid detect-to-engage sequences and the
integrated mission-planning capability needed both to support the Marine
Corps' operational maneuver concepts and to ensure a high kill
probability against mobile and camouflaged targets.
To meet the
Navy's objective of manning the ship with only 95 people, DD-21's crew
will have to be technically and tactically proficient, highly
computer-literate, and skilled in all disciplines of surface warfare. To
support those requirements, the DD-21 program is working with industry
to engineer warfare automation, develop advanced training concepts, and
reduce the administrative and maintenance burdens imposed on DD-21
Sailors, allowing them to focus on warfighting.
Advanced
Capabilities For Multimission Ships
As a
multimission destroyer, DD-21 will be able to operate independently or
as an integral part of a naval, joint, or combined (i.e., coalition)
task force, providing an advanced level of tactical support for ground
campaigns. Despite the current lack of a naval peer competitor, current
and future U.S. surface combatants must be able to contend with
increasingly capable threats such as mines, antiship cruise missiles,
and modern diesel submarines. In order for DD-21 to gain access into
littoral theaters worldwide and protect itself from both sophisticated
conventional and asymmetrical threats, it will be designed and equipped
with advanced sensors, weapons, information warfare systems, and
enhanced survivability features, including:
- A
multifunction radar tailored for littoral environments;
- Armed
helicopters and/or tactical unmanned aerial vehicles;
- An
integrated undersea warfare suite, including organic
"in-stride" mine-avoidance systems;
- A fully
distributed total ship computing architecture; and
- Unprecedented
surface-ship signature levels (i.e., stealth).
With its
maritime battlespace secured, DD-21 will be able to exploit its unique
ability to deliver ordnance on land targets using a wide variety of
weapons over a broad coverage area. DD-21's "attack-in-depth"
will likely include dedicated next-generation Tomahawk Land-Attack
Missiles for strategic and tactical strikes at ranges of up to 1,600
nautical miles (nm), as well as Advanced Land-Attack Missiles (ALAMs)
for destroying tactical targets such as tanks, mobile missile batteries,
or underground facilities to ranges of 200 nm.
DD-21 also
will feature two long-range (100 nm) 155mm-battery-equivalent Advanced
Gun Systems (AGSs). The guns, now going through engineering and
manufacturing development, will serve as DD-21's main battery for naval
surface-fire support and surface-dominance missions, delivering
sustainable, high-volume, and precision fires at a cost significantly
lower than that of a missile. Each gun will feature low
radar-cross-section and infrared signatures and will be able to fire
both guided and ballistic projectiles, drawn from a fully automated
600-plus-round magazine.
Providing a
variety of flexible, all-weather, land-attack capabilities and adhering
to the "economy of warfare" principle are essential to DD-21's
operational efficacy, especially when considering the uncertainty of
21st-century security needs and the diverse missions that the ship will
be expected to perform. In that context, the goal for DD-21 can be
simply stated: to be able, using the right weapon, to destroy the right
target at the right time.
An
Innovative Acquisition Strategy
In addition
to introducing significant advances in the way that U.S. naval surface
combatants will fight in future conflicts, the DD-21 program has laid
the groundwork for improving the way the Navy does its business. The
program is continuing to execute a competitive, price-based acquisition
strategy that will not only address 21st-century operational
requirements but also will take full advantage of the expertise and
ingenuity of both the U.S. Navy's scientific community and private
industry.
This
much-streamlined acquisition approach seeks to maximize innovation and
design flexibility while facilitating cost savings through the use of
commercial market technologies, nondevelopmental items, open systems
architectures, and privatized life-cycle-support concepts.
The DD-21
program has teamed with two industry consortiums from the earliest
stages of concept development to achieve a revolutionary design, ensure
producibility, and minimize total ownership costs. This Navy-industry
partnership includes active participation by the Navy's science and
technology community through an agreement with the chief of naval
research, as well as cooperative efforts with allied navies in key
functional areas such as manning.
Each
industry team has linked shipbuilders and system integrators from the
outset, with the trade-space for total system engineering of the ship
extending over the entire life cycle--from basic conception to final
disposal. Although stringent performance boundaries are in place, the
Navy has offered the DD-21 industry teams unprecedented freedom to
achieve an optimal design solution. Operating and support costs,
including personnel costs, are defined as requirements and show
significant potential for reducing the total DD-21 ownership cost. A
high percentage of the anticipated savings can be attributed to the
relatively small size of the crew, as called for in the validated
operational requirements document by the Defense Department's Joint
Requirements Oversight Council.
In past
shipbuilding efforts, the Navy has sometimes arbitrarily designed and
engineered its ships without integrating or seriously accounting for the
needs (or costs) of the individual Sailor. As Secretary Danzig has
noted, this habit developed over time--in part, at least, because the
Navy could count on conscription (i.e., the draft) to man its ships. [In
practice, the Navy usually was manned by volunteers--it was the threat
of the draft, though, that encouraged many young men to volunteer for
naval service.]
The U.S.
armed services changed to an all-volunteer force in the early 1970s, but
the same design practices continued for many years thereafter.
The
Multimodal Man-Machine Interface
Today, the
DD-21 program is using the concept of Human Systems Integration (HSI)
and simulation-based tools in a Human-Centered Design Environment (HCDE)
to treat the Sailor as an integral part of the eventual design solution.
Program officials are working with the industry design teams to engineer
the Sailor as a component of the total ship system using top-down
functional analyses and knowledge-superiority concepts. The DD-21
Manning and Affordability Initiative's Multimodal Watchstation test bed,
to cite but one example, analyzes man-machine interface functions and
demonstrates how automation is designed using the flow of human thought
processes.
The
challenges the Navy now faces in both recruiting and retention are
caused in large part by the robust American economy and represent
another issue that must be considered in dealing with today's
all-volunteer force. One way to improve recruiting, retention, and crew
morale in the 21st century is to design ships with quality-of-life
features in mind, specifically in the areas of habitability, food
service, recreation, and personal or privacy needs, including
communication links with the Sailors' families back home. In fact, Navy
leaders already have begun to consider broad institutional changes in
regard to shipboard manning through various integrated product teams and
program initiatives like the "Smart Ship" concept.
Opportunities
afforded by automation and information technologies, combined with the
pressure to reduce ownership costs through optimal manning, are forcing
the Navy to rethink its whole approach to the way Sailors work, live,
and fight in today's world--and not just for planned ships like DD-21.
During a recent brief to the Naval Research Advisory Committee on
"Optimizing Surface Ship Manning," Navy Inspector General Vice
Adm. Lee F. Gunn said that ship designers should focus on equipping the
crew for battle and that any function not needed for training,
operating, or warfighting must be viewed as secondary. Similar cultural
changes should be systematically applied to the shore establishment as
well, according to Gunn.
Full-Service
Contracting
The DD-21
program is addressing shore-based as well as shipboard operating costs
by investigating innovative life-cycle engineering and support (LCE&S)
management concepts that eventually will become the responsibility of a
full-service contractor (FSC). To provide the competing DD-21 design
teams with a strong economic incentive to focus system-engineering
efforts on total life-cycle cost, the FSC selected will be given
life-cycle responsibility for many aspects of training, supply,
maintenance, and modernization that hitherto have been the Navy's
responsibility after the ship's delivery to the fleet. Because of the
FSC's involvement, industry will play a significantly greater role in
the day-to-day support of 21st-century surface combatants.
The
challenge now facing the Navy is how to allocate life-cycle management
functions between the government and industry, balance their respective
interests, and craft the appropriate contractual vehicles needed to
implement the still-evolving FSC concept. In addition to promoting and
expanding industry initiatives, the DD-21 program has established an
integrated product team to study LCE&S and FSC issues, and has
started a "Fleet Outreach" effort to coordinate related DD-21
developments with the leadership of the surface Navy.
To
summarize, DD-21 represents the most aggressive set of warfighting
requirements ever established for a U.S. Navy surface combatant; the
DD-21 program also is serving--in the words of Dr. Jacques Gansler,
undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology--as "a
real-world laboratory" for proving Navy acquisition reform
principles. At this point there are still numerous issues to be
resolved, questions to be answered, and decisions to be made. But one
thing remains certain: The Navy will meet its operational requirements
and total ownership cost objectives only by ensuring that DD-21 is: (a)
optimally manned with smart surface warriors; (b) equipped with
offensive, responsive, and flexible weapons; and (c) acquired through
maximum possible use of smart business practices. The 21st-century
Land-Attack Destroyer reflects the future of the Navy in many respects.
Editor's
Note: DD-21 Agreement Phase I (System Concepts) will continue
through fiscal year 1999, which ends on 30 September 1999. Agreement
Phase II (Initial System Design) will begin in October 1999, and will
last approximately 18 months (until the Navy selects a single team,
probably no later than April 2001). First-ship award is scheduled for FY
2004, with delivery in FY 2008 and initial operational capability in FY
2009. As the first in a family of 21st-century surface combatants, the
DD-21 class will comprise 32 ships, replacing the Navy's Spruance-class
destroyers and Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided-missile frigates as they
retire. [To learn more about DD-21 and the organizations bringing this
warship to life, visit the program site on the World Wide Web, http://dd21.crane.navy.mil.]
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